


Come to Me By Night

by Mireille



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Cap_Ironman Big Bang, Cap_Ironman Big Bang 2019, Civil War Fix-It, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Natasha Romanov Dies, Off-screen Character Death, Tony is not always a reliable narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 04:34:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 47,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21332344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Tony hasn't seen Steve since Siberia, and he's happy about that. He doesn'tmissSteve, obviously, or wish their relationship had ended differently. But when Steve turns up on his doorstep, injured and pleading for Tony to help him rescue his team from a Hydra cell in Lichtenbad, Tony agrees, on one condition: after this, they're done. When this is over, he never wants to see or hear from Steve again.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 44
Kudos: 268
Collections: 2019 Captain America/Iron Man Big Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Cap-IM BB art Team Beta 2019](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21318715) by [essouffle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/essouffle/pseuds/essouffle). 

> This was written for the Cap/Iron Man Big Bang, and features wonderful art by [essouffle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/essouffle/pseuds/essouffle) ([here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21318715)) and [13bella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/13bella/pseuds/13bella) ([here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21330508)). Thank you both for making such amazing art for my story. <3 
> 
> The other person I need to thank is soft_princess, without whom this story would be a confusing mess that I probably would have given up on in the middle.

****

"Boss, there's someone at the gate."

Tony didn't look up from his contemplation of the amber liquid in his glass. It was only his third drink of the day, pretty good for around nine in the evening. Spectacularly good, considering he'd come to California to lick his metaphorical wounds after Pepper had declared that this time, the breakup was going to stick. 

And, of course, there were those other wounds, the ones that he'd been pretending had healed completely, without even leaving a scar. Not even his physical injuries had done that, but he refused to acknowledge that the deeper ones even existed. 

So yes, three drinks in four hours wasn't bad at all. 

"Did I forget we're expecting somebody?" he asked Friday. 

There were only a few people he'd tolerate showing up on his doorstep unannounced, especially this doorstep. 

Pepper, but that wouldn't happen. 

The kid, but there was no way Peter would be here; you couldn't get from Queens to Malibu with a MetroCard. 

Rhodey, but Rhodey always called first, and only "just showed up" if Tony ignored the calls. 

Anyone else either made an appointment, or was bringing trouble with them. 

And despite his question, Tony knew he wasn't expecting anyone. That was the reason he'd come to California, to the house he'd had rebuilt from the foundations up, the house he'd thought he'd be bringing Pepper to live in after their honeymoon. He'd come here because he'd be left alone out here; when he was ready for meetings and business again, he'd go back to New York. 

"Your next appointment isn't until next Thursday," the AI said. "The only thing on your calendar from now until then is a multi-day event: 'Wallow in self-pity.'" 

He didn't remember adding that; he suspected Friday was developing her understanding of snark. 

"Okay, then, you know what to do." He took another drink of his whiskey and set the glass down.

Friday was silent for a moment; Tony knew that she was using the speaker mounted next to the front gate to tell whoever it was that Mr. Stark was unavailable. 

"He refuses to leave, sir." 

"Show me." 

A holographic display appeared in front of him, showing him the feed from the security camera mounted on the fence. At first, the guy's head was down, and between that and the darkness, Tony's initial impression was, "Why is some homeless guy demanding to see me?" 

Then the man looked up at the camera for a moment, and Tony's hands curled into fists. 

"Why the hell didn't you tell me that it was Rogers out there?"

"He asked me not to," she said, and Tony kicked himself for not having created a "Steve Rogers Is _Not_ Our Friend" protocol for Friday a year ago.

Shit. Steve, on his doorstep.

What the hell. Steve had never been here; he hadn't even been to the first Malibu house. But now he was at the gate like he expected Tony to let him in. 

Tony looked at the image again. What he'd assumed at first was some vibration affecting the cameras was actually Steve, literally swaying on his feet.

Once Tony had noticed that, he couldn't help but see that Steve looked terrible: too thin, dirty, unshaven, his uniform torn and stained. It was impossible to be sure from the monochrome image, but he thought there was blood matted in Steve's hair. The stains on his uniform were dark enough to be blood, too. 

Steve's lips were moving. "Give me sound, Friday," Tony said, picking up his glass again. He needed more alcohol for this. 

"--your help," Steve was saying as the sound cut in. 

"Put me through." When Friday complied, he addressed Steve. "I'm the last person you should be asking for help, Rogers." 

"Tony, please," Steve said. "I know you have no reason to help me, but the others--" Steve's voice broke, and it was a second or so before he could continue. "Natasha's dead. Hydra has Sam and Wanda. I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't for them." 

He swayed again, this time putting his hand out to brace himself on the iron fence. "Please," he said again. 

Tony had been intending to tell Steve to fuck off, or he'd call the authorities. He wouldn't have actually made the call--at least, he was almost sure that he wouldn't--but after everything, Steve would probably believe the threat. 

But if Steve could be trusted--a big "if," because Steve Rogers was a liar--Natasha was dead, and Hydra had two people who used to be part of Tony's team. "Let him in, Friday," Tony said. 

He didn't get up right away; as shaky as Steve looked, it would take him a minute or two to reach the front door, and Friday could open that for him as well. Instead, he finished his drink before going to meet Steve. 

When he got to the foyer, Steve was inside, leaning heavily against the closed front door. 

No matter what he knew about Steve now, Tony's heart ached to see him like that. An extinction burst, he told himself, the last pathetic remnants of what he'd once felt for Steve trying to make their presence known. 

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't call Secretary Ross and tell him you're here," Tony said. 

He hadn't called when Steve sent him the phone. He'd been ignoring Ross as much as possible since then. He hadn't been able to see what Steve and the others spending the rest of their lives in a cage would fix. He still couldn't. 

"I can't," Steve said. "If that's what you think you need to do, go ahead. Just help them, Tony. Please." 

"We'll see," Tony said, even though he already knew what he was going to do. He couldn't leave the others in Hydra's hands, and locking Steve up wouldn't solve any of the problems the Avengers' carelessness--_his own_ carelessness--had caused. 

Besides, he'd loved Steve once, even if Steve had turned out not to deserve it. Even if it turned out Steve hadn't even _wanted_ it. "Come in and sit down," he said, then, looking at the way Steve was letting the wall support his weight, asked, "Can you make it that far?"

"I've made it all the way from Lichtenbad. I can make it to the couch."

"Yeah," Tony said, "but you don't have a quinjet to help you now." 

"I didn't have it then, either." Steve pushed off from the wall and moved purposefully, though slowly, across the room. 

Tony didn't like to think about how badly hurt Steve had to be if the serum wasn't taking care of it. "What happened to the jet?"

"It blew up." Steve shrugged, though only with one shoulder. He was holding his left arm stiffly, Tony noticed. 

They went through into the living room, and Tony waved at the couch, a sectional that ran along two sides of a rectangle just off the center of the room, and the chairs that, with the tables between them, made up the other two sides. "Sit wherever you want," he said. "I don't know what'll be easier for you to get into and out of, in your condition."

"Thanks." Steve eased himself carefully down onto the couch, near one end. 

"Don't think I've forgotten that you just told me you blew up a jet."

Steve managed a tiny smile. "Can I have another one?"

"I'm not giving you another jet to blow up."

"You never let me have any fun," Steve said, leaning his head back against the couch and closing his eyes. 

"Isn't that usually my line?" Tony said, and regretted it instantly. He didn't want to remind Steve of the good old days when they were together. Or even the less good old days, when they weren't together, but when Tony, at least, had believed that was only a temporary situation. 

If those days hadn't died a final death at the airport in Berlin, Siberia had certainly finished the job and piled six feet of dirt on their coffin. All Steve was to Tony now was a former teammate, a current problem, and a lot of unhappy memories. 

But that was enough for Tony to have let him in, and it was enough to keep him from reaching for his phone now. 

"Are you hungry?" he asked after a moment. Tony didn't know how long it had been since Steve had been hurt, but since he'd made it from eastern Europe to California without his own jet or the option of taking a commercial flight, it had to have been at least a day or two. If the serum hadn't healed Steve already, he was pretty badly hurt, and Tony knew that he'd need food and rest to complete the healing process. A healthy Steve Rogers burned through a terrifying number of calories in a day. Steve recovering from injuries needed double or triple that. 

There wasn't an answer, though; Steve had fallen asleep, sprawled on the sofa with his back wedged into the corner made by the sofa's arm and back. He hadn't even had a chance for Tony to tell him that section was a recliner, just passed out with his feet on the floor. 

Tony waited a few minutes before getting up and going over to Steve, trying to assess his injuries without touching him. The mats in Steve's hair were definitely dried blood, but it looked like the cuts had closed; besides, everyone knew that scalp wounds bled like a son of a bitch. They could have been minor. 

All the skin he could see beneath the rips in Steve's suit was healed, too, though some of it looked pink and new. There was a lot of bruising, most faded to a sickly green, but a few spots still deep purple, either newer than the others or much more severe. None of it would account for the state Steve was in, though. 

For a moment, Tony considered having Friday scan Steve for internal injuries, and then reminded himself that he didn't care that much about Steve's welfare anymore. If Steve wanted medical help, he could ask for it, and Tony would do what he could, because he wasn't a monster. 

But Steve hadn't come to him for that. Honestly, he wasn't entirely sure what Steve had come to him for. His request for help had been pretty nebulous, and it wasn't even like they could be sure the others weren't beyond help, if Hydra had them. 

Tony got up and went into the kitchen. Steve was going to need food before they went any further with figuring out their next move. Tony had just had groceries delivered that morning, and because he'd been expecting to spend most of his time in his workshop, a lot of what he'd bought could be turned into sandwiches. That was going to be handy. 

He'd have to have Friday order more food in the morning, with a second person in the house, but for now, he made a plate piled high with turkey and ham sandwiches, added a few bottles of water and all but one of the bunch of bananas, and left the whole thing on the coffee table along with a post-it note that said, simply, _Eat_. 

The next problem to solve was the matter of clothes. Steve couldn't keep walking around in the tattered remnants of his suit, and he sure as hell couldn't walk around Tony's house _not_ wearing the suit, either. Nothing Tony owned would come close to fitting, but Friday had a record of Steve's measurements--the clothes would be a little too large right now, but a few square meals would take care of that--and Tony was familiar with Steve's general bland, dad-who-shops-at-JC-Penney, style. 

Ten minutes later, Friday had ordered a small selection of appropriate clothing to be delivered early tomorrow, though they were definitely not from JC Penney. Not only did Tony want to use a retailer that could provide him with overnight delivery, but also, he wouldn't be surprised if a charge from Penneys set off a security alert on his credit card, since it was such a deviation from his usual. The last thing they needed was anyone taking any special notice of this purchase.

Everything else that Steve needed to do--shower, shave, give Tony a hell of a lot more in the way of an explanation--could wait for a while. 

But it was still only about ten at night, and it wasn't like Tony was going to be able to sleep with a snake like Steve Rogers in his house, anyway, so he put on some coffee and started setting up some search parameters for Friday. 

He might not be able to find everything he needed to know before Steve filled in some of the blanks in his story, but if Hydra had captured three former Avengers and blown up a quinjet, there'd have to be some trace he could find. 

Digging through the results would give him a good reason to be in the living room until Steve woke up. He didn't necessarily want to admit that he was out there because he didn't trust Steve alone in his house. 

The last thing he needed was for Steve to realize he had any effect on Tony these days beyond mild annoyance. Steve was an unfortunate chapter of Tony's life, but that book had not only been closed, but burned. 

He didn't trust Steve, and he figured Steve was bright enough to know that; it was the expected side-effect of stabbing someone in the back. But Steve couldn't hurt him, not anymore, and Tony wanted to be sure that Steve knew that, too. 

The sandwiches and the new clothes might give Steve the wrong impression, but that didn't matter. He needed Steve to be able to give him enough information to find the others. Depending on what had to be done to get the others away from Hydra, he might need Steve's muscle on a rescue mission. 

Steve needed to be functional for that. Steve also needed to not be walking around in a shredded jumpsuit. He'd be keeping out of sight, of course, but just in case anyone caught a glimpse of him, a man in normal clothing would arouse a lot less suspicion. 

For once, everything Tony was doing had a completely practical consideration behind it. Exactly none of it meant that being in the same room with Steve again, after all this time, had reminded Tony that he hadn't stopped missing Steve, no matter what he'd thought; he'd just grown used to the constant ache of it.

****

Unless there was danger present, Steve never went directly from deep sleep to instant wakefulness. Tony's memories of waking up next to him generally involved a giant pile of blankets, pillows pulled over Steve's head, and a lot of sleepy mumbling at the alarm, sometimes full of language that the world would be shocked to learn that Captain America even knew, let alone used.

But a little after one in the morning, Steve's eyes snapped open and he jerked upright on the couch, not quite hiding the wince as his battered body protested the sudden movement. "What time is it?"

"One-eleven AM, Captain Rogers," Friday said. 

"There's food," Tony added, not looking up from what he was doing. 

"Thanks, Tony," Steve said, snagging a sandwich from the plate. Tony probably should have covered them when he realized Steve wasn't just catnapping, so the bread was a little dried out, but Steve didn't complain. 

Tony wasn't even sure Steve _chewed_. Three triangles of sandwich and a bottle of water disappeared before he could say anything else. 

"Sorry," Steve said finally, while peeling one of the bananas. "I haven't had a lot of chance to stop and eat lately."

"And you need food and sleep, and a lot of both, so your body can heal without having to cannibalize itself to do it," Tony said. "I remember how it works."

"Yeah, of course you do. Sorry." Steve ate the banana, then another half-sandwich. There were only two more sandwiches and the rest of the bananas before Tony would have to find him something else. 

Which reminded him: "Friday, first thing in the morning, re-order today's groceries, but three... no, four times the quantity on everything but the kombucha." Steve had tried the drink once; the face he'd made had been hilarious. And, to be honest, Tony could see his point; he didn't love the stuff himself, but Pepper had sworn it was good for him, and so he'd drunk it. 

"Come to think of it, just leave the kombucha off the order altogether." He'd throw the rest out. Maybe it was good for him, but he didn't like it, and he didn't have to make Pepper happy that he was taking care of himself, either. 

"Add some meat. Some chicken breasts, some steaks." He remembered that when Steve had been healing up from various injuries in the past, the SHIELD medical staff had suggested extra protein, and it at least hadn't seemed to slow things down any. 

He guessed at quantities and specifics; he could just tell Friday to check her records from back when Steve was still coming around, to make sure she got things that Steve liked, but he didn't want Steve to realize that Tony hadn't erased all traces of him from his life. 

Though maybe "I didn't think about you for long enough to erase you" was a message of its own. 

In the time it had taken him to place the grocery order, Steve had wiped out the rest of the sandwiches and the other four bananas. Tony caught himself about to say, "Good, that should get you back on your feet," before he remembered that the only reason he cared about Steve getting back on his feet was that it meant Steve would be getting out of his life sooner. 

Tony wasn't sure if he'd told Steve yet that he was going to help, but there was no question of that. His disagreements with Natasha and the others had been political. Philosophical. He'd been angry at them, but it hadn't been personal like it had been with Steve. 

They might not be friends these days--and all right, he'd never really known Sam or Wanda well enough to consider them friends to begin with--but that didn't mean he'd leave them with Hydra. 

(If one of them had been on his doorstep, asking him to help them rescue Steve, he wouldn't have hesitated either. But in that case, he'd have _wanted_ to say "Let Hydra have him," even if he wouldn't have meant it, or let it happen.)

"Tell me what happened," Tony said. "It'll be easier for me to find the information we need if I have some details."

Steve nodded and took another drink of water. He was already looking a little less drawn, as far as Tony could see beneath the hobo beard he was sporting. "I don't know if you know what we've been doing since we, uh, left the team."

He couldn't resist saying, "Besides becoming internationally-wanted criminals?" and he couldn't resist being a little pleased at Steve's flinch, either. 

Steve didn't respond directly, though. "We've been tracking down Hydra cells," he said. "They may not be as powerful as they were a few years ago, but Hydra hasn't been eradicated completely, and they'll rebuild."

Tony had known all of that, but Steve might read too much into it if Tony told him that he'd been keeping tabs on their activities. "Okay," was all he said, pretending to be engrossed in the data Friday was displaying for him, even though it was just a map showing the Hydra cells Steve's team had dealt with. 

"We found evidence of significant Hydra activity in Lichtenbad," Steve went on. "It was the largest group we'd found, and they also had a lot of connections to other cells. Our intel identified the leaders of that group and some of the others as people who'd been up-and-coming members of Hydra before we took them down. They were unimportant enough or well-hidden enough to have been able to stay under the radar, but they had enough connections that they could take advantage of the power vacuum afterward."

"We knew something like that would happen," Tony said. "The little fish suddenly found themselves alone in the big pond."

"The biggest name we found was Ophelia Sarkissian. She was third in command of the Hydra operations in Santiago. About eighteen months ago, she relocated to Europe, and we think she's the brains behind this. We decided we should take her group out before it got any more powerful, and since she'd been drawing people into her organization based out of Lichtenstadt, a single strike could have done it."

"Lichtenbad isn't where I'd headquarter my evil organization," Tony said. "It's pretty grim." 

"It's also likely to turn a blind eye to a lot of criminal activity," Steve reminded him. "They're coming out of twenty years or more of political chaos. If Hydra doesn't terrorize the locals, the authorities are going to have better things to do with their time, especially if Sarkissian's people are generous with bribes." 

He finished that bottle of water and opened another, though this time he only sipped from it. "Natasha's--Natasha _was_ pretty sure that Hydra owned a lot of property there, with enough dummy corporations in place that it's hard to connect the property with anyone openly associated with Hydra." 

"You getting this, Friday?" It was a place to start looking, at least.

"I'm making a full recording. Should I start a search of the real-estate records in Lichtenbad?"

"Yeah, do that," he said, and then looked over at Steve again. "So, what? You charged in without any backup and it went badly?"

"No, we went in undercover."

Tony stared at Steve for a few seconds. Then a few more, just to make his point. "You went undercover," he said. "You. Hydra's Most Wanted. Wearing your uniform. Do you even know the meaning of the word 'undercover'?"

"When I say 'we' went undercover," Steve said, glaring back at him, "I mean that the others went in undercover. I was their extraction team and backup."

"You sent Wanda undercover in a Hydra base? Weren't you afraid they'd recognize her?" Natasha should have known better. Steve and Sam should have known better, and so should Wanda, but Tony would _never_ have expected Natasha to make such a bad call. Wanda had been Hydra. That was where she'd gotten her powers. They'd know who she was. 

"She's very good at undercover work," Steve argued. "She uses her magic to disguise her appearance, and she speaks German, so she could pose as a Lichtenbader. After a day or two listening to recordings, she had the local accent down well enough that Nat approved."

Tony could believe that, anyway. Wanda's accent when speaking English had quickly become Americanized once she was living at the compound. "So what went wrong?"

Steve grimaced. "There was a big meeting. Pretty much everyone Hydra has in eastern Europe was there, and then some. And as a security measure, they did something that interfered with magic. I don't know what, I didn't have time to get details when Nat called me in. Wanda had a physical disguise, too; she'd colored her hair, made herself up differently--but someone recognized her face." 

"Which is why I just said it was stupid to send her in there." 

"We needed everyone we could spare to go undercover," Steve said, "and it isn't like we were spoiled for choice."

Tony didn't suggest that maybe a former Hydra operative, even if she'd mostly been their lab rat, wasn't a good choice to send undercover with Hydra, no matter whose side she was on now. Even if you assumed that she wasn't a double agent, there were too many risks involved. But if Steve wanted to put that much trust in Wanda, that was his choice. 

Steve had some funny ideas about who to trust, if you asked him, but nobody did. 

"You know what? Let's just assume I spent an hour telling you what a terrible decision that was and move on," Tony said. "What happened then?"

"Natasha managed to get a message to me. She and Sam got to Wanda and the three of them tried to fight their way out," Steve said. "By the time I got there, Natasha was dead and the other two were gone." He scowled at Tony. "Nothing Natasha said suggested Wanda was working with Hydra."

"I hadn't really thought she would," Tony admitted, "but the fact that they knew her was a problem. I take it your rescue mission didn't go as well as you hoped."

"Hydra blew up the building on their way out. I was knocked out for a while, I don't know how long. When I came to, everyone was gone, and they'd found the jet and blown it as well. I had to make my own way back to the U.S."

That was a story all its own, Tony was sure, but not one he was going to ask about. Steve wasn't his friend. They weren't going to sit around swapping stories. 

"You could have called me," Tony said. "You did send me that piece of crap cell phone. I have it around somewhere." It was in his pocket, in fact, either fully charged or close to it; he couldn't remember if he'd taken it off the charger this morning or the day before. 

"Would you have picked up? Besides, the phone was on the jet when it blew. I didn't have the option."

"So you came back here, where Ross wants your head on a plate, and tracked me down."

"Not much tracking needed. The internet told me you'd been seen in California within the last few days, and I knew you were talking about rebuilding here before we..." He hesitated. "Fell out." 

That was putting it mildly. "That's not the point. The point is, why come here and not the compound?"

"Because I trust you." 

The bastard. "You shouldn't."

"I trust you to do what you can for them," Steve amended. "I've already said I won't run if you try to hand me over to Ross or the UN, as long as you get Sam and Wanda away from Hydra. Even being in prison here will be better than that."

Tony didn't have personal experience, but he thought that was probably true. "You're sure Natasha's--" He couldn't quite bring himself to say it. "You're sure about Natasha."

Steve closed his eyes briefly. "I've seen dead bodies before."

Tony decided not to press for details. He'd keep an eye out for anything that suggested Steve was wrong, but he probably wasn't. "Okay," he said. "I have somewhere to start from, anyway. I'll start poking around, see if I can't figure out where they're being held." 

"Maybe there's something on the Dark Web?" Steve suggested. 

He snorted. "What do you know about the Dark Web?"

"I read a couple of articles about it."

"So, nothing. Don't worry about where I'm looking." A lot of the places he'd be looking, he didn't technically have access to. "Why don't you go clean up? You're leaving filth on my couch. You won't fit into any of my clothes, but there's a washer and dryer in the guest bathroom--the closet with the louvered doors--and some new stuff should be here by... when's that drone drop-off scheduled, Friday?"

"Before nine AM." 

"So you'll have clothes in the morning," Tony said. 

"I can make do until then," Steve said. "Thanks for thinking of that."

"Your suit reeks, and so do you," Tony said in lieu of "you're welcome." "I did it to spare myself. Guest bathroom is upstairs, second on the right. There should be a new toothbrush in the medicine cabinet. A razor, too, if you want it."

"Thanks, I'm good." 

"Oh God, that beard was on purpose?" Tony muttered, but Steve was already on his feet, stumbling toward the stairs, and he didn't reply. 

He was partway up the stairs before Tony remembered to ask him, "Are you going to need more food tonight? I'm guessing all of that is going toward keeping you upright."

"If it's not too much trouble," Steve said, pausing and leaning over the railing to look down toward Tony. "I can make myself something when I come back down, though. You don't have to do it."

"You're not passing out in my kitchen," he said. "Which also reminds me, Friday can do a medical scan if you want."

"I'm all right," Steve insisted, and Tony pretended that Steve would have said anything different if he wasn't. "I just need more food and sleep. My body will take care of the rest. Besides, what could we do if I needed medical attention? Taking me to the hospital is just going to get me arrested."

"I thought you were okay with that."

"Once the others are safe, yes. Until then, I need to be out here so I can help get them back."

"You need to be in the shower," Tony said. "I'll make some food." Now that he thought about it, he couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten, either. The last thing he remembered eating was a bowl of cold cereal, but was that this afternoon? This morning? Yesterday? Friday would know, but it didn't seem that important. 

He got out the carton of eggs and a bowl, considered for a minute, and then started cracking the entire dozen. He could take some for himself, and Steve would still have nine or ten eggs' worth of protein. That should be enough to hold him until morning.

In the morning, they'd start figuring out what they were going to do to rescue Sam and Wanda. To bring back Natasha's body, too, if that was possible. 

In the morning, he'd start figuring out what he was going to do about Steve. 

Right now, Tony was grateful that the answer was as simple as "feed him all your groceries."

****

If he and Steve had had anything like a normal relationship, back when they had any kind of relationship at all, this would have seemed familiar: Steve wandering downstairs in his boxers and undershirt, perching on one of the stools at the breakfast bar while Tony finished scrambling eggs and making toast.

It wasn't, though. He and Steve hadn't gone in for the domestic-bliss kind of thing. Tony definitely hadn't ever cooked for him. To be strictly fair, Tony barely ever cooked for _himself_, but he couldn't remember even making a peanut-butter sandwich for Steve. 

There hadn't ever seemed to be time for that. Both of them had been away a lot, and when they were in the same place, at the same time, without anything to fight, they'd tended to focus on making up for lost time in the bedroom. 

Everything else between them might have turned out to be complete bullshit, but Tony couldn't deny that the sex had been surface-of-the-sun levels of hot. 

It was just too bad he hadn't realized that was all it had been. It wouldn't have changed what happened between them, obviously, but it would have made it all less painful. 

"After this," Tony said, shoving a plate piled high with pale-yellow eggs in front of Steve, "you should go upstairs and get some sleep." Steve's eyelids were already beginning to droop again, but he looked better than he had when he arrived. More of the bruises were fading, and he was moving less stiffly. A few more good meals and a few hours of sleep, and he'd be back to normal. 

Steve nodded, chuckling to himself. 

"What's so funny?"

"This," Steve said. "You, pushing food at me and reminding me to sleep. It's usually the other way around."

Tony tried not to wince, but he must not have succeeded, because Steve rapidly backtracked. "I mean, it _was_ usually the other way around. Back when we-- well, before." 

"Yeah," Tony said. "It was." Steve hadn't done much cooking either, but there had been a lot of days when Tony looked up from a marathon session in his workshop to find a plate of food on the bench in front of him, with a note that said, _Eat this now._ Everything on the plate had usually been something that Tony could eat with one hand while he worked, so it actually got eaten, too. 

There had also been a lot of nights when Steve showed up to lean against the doorway and refuse to leave unless Tony shut down what he was working on and went up to get some sleep. Steve stayed over on those nights; Tony was usually so exhausted that they didn't have sex until he woke up, but Steve never seemed to mind. 

"If I don't stay here," he'd said, "you're just going to think of something you forgot to do and go right back to working."

Steve had known him so well, but Tony hadn't known Steve at all. He'd thought he had, but there was no way to reconcile the man who'd seemed to care so much about Tony with the one who'd been keeping secrets from Tony for years. They couldn't both be the real Steve, and the liar was definitely real. 

All the rest had to have been more lies, even if Tony didn't know why Steve would have bothered. 

Steve had already made a dent in his breakfast; Tony looked down at his own plate, then pushed it toward Steve. "Eat this, too. I'm not hungry." Steve being here was tying him into knots; he thought if he tried to eat, he'd choke on it. 

"Are you sure?" When Tony nodded, Steve scraped the food onto his plate. "It's not just the healing," he said, apologetically. "I mean, a lot of it's the healing, but it also took me a week to get here, and I didn't always get a chance to eat." 

A guy Steve's size, with Steve's revved-up metabolism, needed a lot of food to keep going. He must have made it the last few days on sheer stubbornness. 

Not that it was a surprise to Tony that he had. Steve was a perpetual motion machine run on stubbornness. That, at least, was something that was true about the real Steve Rogers and not just the one Tony had thought he knew. 

"I'm going to get back to work," Tony said. "Tell Friday if there's anything you need."

Steve nodded, then, once he'd swallowed his mouthful of food, said, "I can't thank you enough, Tony. I didn't know who else to go to."

"Yeah, well. I still think of _Natasha_ as a friend," he said, just to see the way Steve's expression tightened a little. 

"By the way," he went on, "you didn't mention whether this rescue plan is supposed to involve your boyfriend. Or did you think I wouldn't help if I knew I was supposed to be saving Barnes, too?"

He would have. Probably. For Sam and Wanda's sake. For Natasha's memory. Getting Barnes out of there would have been Steve's problem, but Tony still would have helped.

Almost definitely. There were levels of viciousness that he hadn't sunk to, at least not yet. 

"Bucky's not--" Steve broke off, sighing. "He's not there. He's somewhere safe, getting help."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "You can say 'Wakanda.' I'm smart enough to figure that out." He hadn't been sure, though. Steve might not have mentioned Barnes because he was worried about Tony's reaction, and while Tony had been keeping tabs on what the former Avengers were doing, that didn't mean that he couldn't have missed something. They worked hard to stay under the radar, and Tony didn't dig that deeply. 

Vision would have known, but Vision never talked to Tony about anything he learned from his visits with Wanda. Officially, they never even acknowledged that those visits happened, and Tony liked it that way. If he knew, he'd be expected to tell Ross about them. Tony didn't want to tell Ross shit, and this way he wasn't technically lying. 

Anyway, he knew what he was looking for now. Two prisoners, a man and a woman. And, if possible, the location of a corpse. He had a general time frame and a starting point for the search. It was enough for now, so he left Steve to finish his food and headed to his workshop.

It was already after four in the morning. Plenty late enough in New York to call Happy. 

Okay, maybe not, but it was plenty late enough in New York for Happy not to be surprised that Tony was calling him. 

"I need the latest version of the Captain America suit," he said as soon as Happy picked up. 

"Do you know what time it is?" Happy growled into the phone. 

"It's four-oh-nine AM," he said. "Rise and shine. I need the latest version of the suit. And the shield--the original one, not the prototype. I had a couple of ideas I want to try out." 

"This is a terrible idea," Happy said. "I don't even know why you're still working on that thing, let alone why you need to work on it right this minute."

"Yeah, you do," Tony said, even though he and Happy never actually talked about Steve. About Tony's insistence on creating a new and improved suit for Captain America even after Steve had gone rogue, yeah. Happy had a lot of opinions about that, and he'd been working for Tony long enough to be willing to share them. But not about _why_ Tony couldn't bring himself to abandon the project. 

But Tony was pretty sure that the spaces around the things Tony said--all the things Tony wouldn't or couldn't say--made shapes that Happy could understand. He'd leave Happy ignorant of any other, newer, reasons; he wasn't about to drag anyone he cared about down with him if he got caught helping Steve. 

"Yeah, I do," Happy confirmed. "But seriously, don't you think it's time you make like Elsa and let it go?"

That surprised a laugh out of him. "I can't believe you're making a _Frozen_ reference." 

"Yeah, well, my sister's kid was obsessed with it for a while. And my point remains. I get that it's an interesting project, but it can wait until you're back in New York."

"I don't know when I'm coming back to New York." Hell, if this went wrong, even if he survived, he'd be in the cell next to Steve's. "Just put it on a plane."

Happy gave in. "It'll be there sometime today. I'll text you with the details when I have them." He sighed. "Just think about what I said, okay? I don't think this is good for you."

"I'll think about how many different ways I can torture you with 'Do You Want to Build a Snowman?', how's that?" Tony said, and hung up so that he could get the last word. 

Happy wasn't wrong. It probably was unhealthy to keep working on improvements to the suit he'd been designing for Steve before everything went to hell. He'd intended it to be--ah, hell, he didn't know what he'd intended it to be. Tony's fuck-up with Ultron had driven a wedge between them already, so maybe he'd hoped it was a way to win Steve back? _Look, I made you this, do I deserve you now?_

Whatever he'd meant it for then, recently it had just been something to tinker with. Something to keep the wounds from scabbing over completely. Better than drinking himself into a coma, but still not good. 

He'd been telling himself that he'd move it into storage when he got back, along with the prototype of the new shield design. Anything of interest could be applied to some other project--the new suit he was designing for Peter, maybe. 

But now he needed the thing, or Steve did, anyway. He couldn't raid a Hydra stronghold in khakis. 

Without the suit, Steve would probably try to do just that, and then they'd have even less of a chance of making it out alive. The suit had communications built in, as well as providing a layer of protection a lot tougher than regular clothing. It wasn't a game-changer, but it did tip the odds a little more toward their favor. 

In spite of everything, Tony wanted Steve to make it out of this alive. No matter what happened afterward, no matter that either of them might have killed the other back in Siberia, he didn't actually want Steve dead. 

He didn't know what he did want, but that wasn't it. 

Right now, what he wanted was to get some idea where Hydra might be keeping their prisoners, if the place near Lichtenstadt where they'd met had been destroyed. "Friday, any luck with those deed searches yet?"

"Possibly," she said. "There are eleven potential matches: properties within a hundred kilometers of the designated starting point whose ownership can be traced to one or more of the entities involved with the Lichtenstadt site."

"Let me see them." 

A list appeared in front of him, and Tony began expanding the entries to get a better idea of what they were describing. Without knowing the area, a street address didn't do him much good, and Tony had never been to Lichtenbad. 

Five of the properties were residential: two small houses and three flats, none currently for sale or rent, all in Lichtenstadt itself or its suburbs, all in areas where they'd have plenty of neighbors. Most of them were probably meant as either safe houses or temporary accommodations. 

One of the apartments was in a much better neighborhood than the others and had a much higher estimated value; Tony would bet that Sarkissian or one of the other new members of Hydra's high command was living there. 

Tony wouldn't have wanted to keep prisoners in any of them, not for more than a night or so. They'd have to be gagged at all times to keep them for shouting for the neighbors to help them, and you'd probably want to restrain them. You could put bars in your windows and reinforced doors in your house, but you couldn't guarantee that your contractor wouldn't talk or that the neighbors wouldn't get nosy. 

One of the houses was on the outer edge of the suburbs; it was on a corner lot, and the house next door was empty. That was the most likely possibility of the five, but even that, Tony ranked fairly low. There was still the house behind it, and the neighbors across the street. 

A restaurant in downtown Lichtenstadt, a dry-cleaning business in a working-class neighborhood--those were probably money-laundering operations and/or fronts for a shadier business. Hydra had to pay the bills somehow, especially since they couldn't keep their armory stocked via SHIELD's budget any more. 

That brought him down to four locations, since from Steve's description of their original headquarters, it wasn't inhabitable now. One was a vacant lot on the western side of Lichtenstadt. Real-estate investment or spot for future expansion? Tony wasn't sure, but everything he found suggested that right now, it really was just an empty lot. 

Another was a warehouse by the river. Tony didn't like to think that Sam and Wanda might have been shipped downriver, maybe even out of the country. At least Lichtenbad didn't have any sea ports to worry about. 

The third was a field--maybe wheat? Tony wasn't that great at identifying crops, but it looked wheat-like. There was a green part further back that looked more like a pasture, and when he got recent aerial photos from Friday, there were signs of recent digging. He'd need a better look to see what that was. His imagination kept suggesting graves, but he couldn't be sure.

The final site was a shuttered factory in Krugersdorf, a village just at the edge of the search area. According to the records Friday had found, the factory had bottled soft drinks until about five years ago, and had been sitting empty since then. That and the warehouse looked like the most promising prospects, and they'd be more easily checked out than the residential properties, too. 

"I need eyes on these two properties," Tony said, indicating them to Friday. "If there are CCTV cameras in the area, I want access to the feeds in real time, and I want you to go through any archives from the past week, looking for anyone meeting the general description of Sam Wilson, Wanda Maximoff, or Natasha Romanoff. Deploy drones, too. I want to see everything."

Friday confirmed the instructions, and on the holographic display, five small picture-in-picture boxes appeared. "The top three feeds are from the warehouse," she said. "Front entrance, loading dock, employee entrance near the dock." The boxes brightened briefly as she listed them off. "The bottom two are the factory. Front and rear entrances."

They all looked exactly like what Tony would have expected. The factory doors were not only closed, but had heavy chains looped through the handles and secured by padlocks. The chain on the rear entrance looked fairly new, not rusty like the one on the front door, but that could have an innocent explanation. 

The warehouse was in use, so the doors weren't chained, but there didn't seem to be any unusual traffic. It was early afternoon in Lichtenbad; employees in work clothes came and went, probably taking their lunch breaks, but that was all. 

He'd keep an eye on things while he worked, anyway. He needed to be doing _something_ while Steve slept. Assuming Steve had gone to sleep. "Friday, what's Steve doing right now?"

"Captain Rogers is in the master bedroom," she said. "Heart rate and respiration suggest that he's sleeping."

Tony snorted. Of course Steve just walked in like he owned the place. Though honestly, Tony didn't remember telling him where the guest bedroom was, and in Steve's exhausted state, he'd probably just found the first room with a bed in it and fell over. 

He didn't want to think about Steve asleep in his bed. That was an occurrence that Tony wanted to keep firmly in the past. Steve wasn't back in his life, not in any capacity. This was a special circumstance, and as soon as it was resolved, Tony would happily go back to never seeing Steve Rogers again as long as he lived. 

But Steve needed the sleep to finish healing, and Steve needed to heal so that Tony wasn't the only one charging into a Hydra base to rescue Sam and Wanda, so for the moment, Tony wasn't going to worry about it. He'd send Steve to the guest room next time, if they were here long enough for Steve to sleep again. 

And he'd absolutely change the sheets this morning as soon as Steve got up, because there was no way in hell he was going to sleep in a bed that smelled like Steve. 

For a while, at least, Tony was able to lose himself in what he was doing, setting up search algorithms looking for anything that might be relevant. It would be an almost impossible task to just monitor worldwide communications for any hint of Hydra activity, but knowing the general geographic area they were interested in and having specific search parameters made it time-consuming, but just barely achievable. 

Once Tony had the search defined properly, Friday could do most of the work, but that initial stage took some time, even for him. He had to make an attempt, go through the results Friday provided him, and use that to refine the parameters further.

He'd gone through two of those cycles when Friday interrupted him to tell him that Steve's clothes had been delivered. Tony got up, stretched, brought the package in, and refreshed his coffee. "Is he still asleep?"

"He seems to be," she said. "His heart rate is a little elevated, but his overall physical condition has improved since his arrival." 

"Not that I asked you that," he said. God, Steve had reduced him to sniping at Friday. He had to get it together before Steve woke up.

Tony tossed the package onto the coffee table and got back to work. 

His next interruption came a few hours later, when a Stark Industries courier arrived bearing a package from Happy. Tony had thought about buying property elsewhere, rather than rebuilding the house in Malibu, but being close enough to an SI branch office that someone could make sensitive deliveries was a real advantage. He wouldn't want just anyone to get their hands on Captain America's suit and shield. 

Tony was reasonably confident that Friday's current search specifications would lead her to the information he wanted, if there was anything to find. He had time to get the suit into his workshop and finish those last few refinements he'd started. Then maybe Steve would be awake. Tony could use some sleep himself, but he wasn't going to sleep in the guest room of his own house just to accommodate Steve Rogers. 

He only needed to take out the suit; the repaired shield didn't need any more work, at least not until Steve had a chance to field-test it and give Tony his opinion of the slight modifications he'd made. 

Tony brought himself up short at that thought. Steve was going to get to use the shield when they went after Hydra, obviously, but it wasn't a field test. Tony wouldn't be improving it for him. Even if he let Steve take it with him--even if Steve went anywhere but into Ross's custody--there wouldn't be any of that. 

They weren't friends anymore; they damn sure weren't any of the other things they might have once been. They weren't even teammates. 

They were temporary, grudging, allies, for the sake of some people Steve had dragged into danger, and that was it. 

But there were a few half-completed details on the suit, and he couldn't send Steve into battle that way, so Tony took it into his workshop to get started. 

Steve never wanted anything high-tech in his suit, and Tony reluctantly gave him what he asked for, but he still needed to integrate the communication system better so that when they went after Hydra, Tony could authorize him to get real-time situation reports directly from Friday. 

He wasn't happy with the join between the gloves and the sleeves, either. Wrists were fragile things, and even if Steve did heal quickly, shattered carpal bones would be a problem in a fight. 

"Boss," Friday interrupted him at some point--he never did well at tracking the passage of time when he was working--"I have something you might want to look at."

Tony straightened up, rolling his shoulders. He never used to stiffen up like this; getting old sucked. "Show me." 

One of the security feeds expanded, showing the back door of that factory in Krugersdorf, with its suspiciously-new padlock. It was dark outside, but there was a light above the door, and Friday adjusted the brightness until Tony could see well enough. 

A woman in casual clothing was unlocking the door. Zooming in revealed a gun shoved into the waistband of her jeans, only partly covered by her jacket. 

She got the door open, picked up a large shopping bag from the ground by her feet, and went into the factory. 

Now what could she be doing in an abandoned factory? She didn't look like a security guard. She wasn't a kid using the building as a place to hang out away from adult supervision; the key made that unlikely, anyway. 

It wasn't a certainty, of course, but it looked to Tony like "low-level operative bringing food to the prisoners." Which would mean that at least one of Steve's team was still alive, and also that Hydra were probably making at least a minimal effort to keep them that way. The food could all be for whoever was guarding the prisoners, but if they weren't going to feed them, why not just shoot them?

"Is this current?" 

"No; it's archived, from about eight PM, local time. The current time in Lichtenbad is just after ten PM; they're nine hours ahead of California." 

Which meant it was early afternoon here. Steve should be waking up soon. 

Friday was still talking. "The same woman exited the facility about an hour later, carrying nothing. Archived footage indicates that a similar visit has been made to this facility twice a day for the past five days," she said. "This woman is the most frequent visitor, but another woman and a man have also each appeared on the recording once. They're always carrying at least one bag or large container, sometimes more." 

"And before five days ago?" 

"These cameras came online six days ago," she said. "On the first day, they were activated in the mid-morning, Lichtenbad time, and were deactivated that evening for a period of just under an hour. The only person who showed up on the recordings for that day was a technician testing the device. He then entered the building. His departure was not recorded."

Tony was guessing that the prisoners were already inside when the cameras came on, and the deactivation period was to give people a chance to leave without being recorded. Pure guesswork, of course, but speculation was all they had right now. 

"Good work," he told her. "Have you found anything else?"

"Nothing conclusive. There have been a few posts on a subreddit devoted to the former Avengers claiming that Natasha Romanoff, also known as the Black Widow, is deceased. The poster promised evidence, but none was ever provided. The account seems to have been created specifically for this purpose; its first post was made six days ago, and the most recent was a day later. IP data locates the poster in Lichtenbad."

If you asked Tony, that sounded like some dumbass decided to brag, got caught, and wasn't in any condition to post to Reddit ever again. 

"Okay. Thanks, Friday." He finished up the last modification to Steve's suit, then stretched again. 

He was exhausted. He'd already been running on fumes when Steve showed up; even by his usual standards, he hadn't been sleeping well lately. And that had been something like sixteen hours ago. Maybe he ought to go and wake Steve up enough to kick him out of Tony's bed. 

He could tell Steve what he'd found, too; that would give him an excuse that wouldn't make him look like an asshole. 

Tony was very clear on who the asshole was in this particular situation, and it wasn't him.

He put his tools away, shut down the display screens, and went upstairs, carrying Steve's new clothes. 

He had to shake Steve three times to be sure the guy wasn't in a coma, even though Friday assured him her scans showed he was sleeping normally. Finally, the third time he shook Steve's shoulder, Steve woke up enough to pull away from him and make grumpy noises. 

That was the Steve he remembered. "Jesus, Rogers, you're still such a pain in the ass," he muttered. "Kicking me out of my own bed."

Though now Tony could see that Steve hadn't really done that. He was only taking up half of the king-size bed, and it wasn't Tony's usual side. He'd even folded the blankets all the way back to make it easier for someone to get in on the other side of the bed. 

It was autopilot, obviously. That was probably why he hadn't thought about looking for a guest room, too. Steve had been dead on his feet, and so he'd lapsed into old habits.

He wasn't trying to remind Tony of the old days, when Tony had been late coming back from the lab--working on something important enough that Steve didn't try to make him sleep until he finished--and Steve had gone to bed before Tony had come back up to the penthouse. 

Steve hadn't been thinking about that at all, because they'd both put all that behind them forever. 

Tony put the small pile of clothing on top of the dresser, then turned back to look at the bed again. 

Ah, fuck it. It was his bed. 

He kicked off his shoes, but hesitated before unbuttoning his jeans. If he was going to try to get some sleep, he wanted to be comfortable, he told himself. This was his house, his room, his bed. He wasn't going to sleep in his clothes. 

But he did pull on a pair of sleep pants from his drawer instead of going to bed in just his underwear, the way he probably would if he'd been alone. He wanted the message he sent to be a clear, "I couldn't get you out of my bed and needed to sleep," not "I miss sleeping next to you."

He didn't. He liked sleeping alone. It was easier; he never had to worry about waking anyone up if he had nightmares or just couldn't get to sleep. 

Specifically, he liked not sleeping next to Steve. Who wanted to share a bed with someone they didn't trust? 

Right now, Tony didn't have anything to worry about from Steve; Steve needed Tony's help too much. And once he didn't need Tony any more, he'd be out of Tony's life again. 

And Tony was going to stay firmly on his side of the bed. Even with someone Steve's size in it, there was plenty of room to leave a no-man's land down the middle. Tony was going to lie here on his back, close his eyes, and pretend that he was alone in the bed. 

Steve had other ideas, though; as soon as Tony had settled onto the mattress, he rolled over so that he could throw one muscular arm across Tony's chest. 

Tony used to find that weight reassuring. It was suffocating now. 

Except that even as he told himself that the arm around him was trapping him, he could feel his body relaxing and his eyes drifting closed.

****


	2. Chapter 2

****

Tony didn't even manage to stay asleep for a full hour. He probably could have gone back to sleep if he'd tried, but he woke curled against Steve's side, and that was unacceptable in every way imaginable.

Steve wouldn't appreciate it, and Tony sure as hell didn't want it, was furious with his subconscious for forgetting that, temporary truces aside, Steve was an enemy.

So he got up, took a quick shower, and went back downstairs. 

The groceries had been delivered while Tony napped, the perishables packed in coolers--they were used to Tony not being available to take the delivery--so he put those away and made himself a couple of sandwiches. Then he considered how hungry Steve was likely to be when he woke up and made another, larger, plate, covering it with plastic wrap. 

Tony took his food and a mug of coffee into the lab with him. He was happy with Steve's suit--no, he wasn't; it was a work in progress like everything he designed, but he was happy _enough_, and this was just going to have to do as a final product. There were still a few loose ends on his personal projects that he wanted to finish up before he got distracted by this mission. 

Once Steve knew they had a likely target, Tony suspected that he wouldn't have time for anything else until it was all over. 

So he ate, and worked on the redesign for the security system here, and looked at the email Rhodey had sent him asking if Tony could tweak his braces to give him a bit more maneuverability. 

Tony moved that email into "PROJECTS - HIGH PRIORITY," which meant Friday would remind him about it if he didn't start working on it soon. He didn't answer the email, though; Rhodey knew him too well. Even in writing, Tony wasn't sure he'd be able to keep him from suspecting there was something going on.

Maybe having Rhodey involved would be useful, but Tony wasn't risking him on this. It was Steve's fault, almost as much as Tony's, that Rhodey had been hurt in Berlin. Next time, he might not be so lucky, if you could even call it that.

Besides, even if Rhodey didn't take an active part in the rescue, knowing what was going on would endanger him. Not to mention that he'd worry about Tony. He had the crazy idea that Tony wasn't completely over what had happened with Steve. Tony didn't want him to think his belief was justified. 

"Any more activity at that factory?" he asked Friday after a while, when he'd put the alarm redesign away for the moment. 

"Nothing yet," she began, and then was interrupted by a voice from the doorway.

"What factory?"

Startled by the unexpected sound, Tony jumped, then turned to glare at Steve. "How long have you been here?"

"Not long," he said, looking away. 

"Twenty-three minutes," Friday clarified, which was definitely a little more than "not long" when it involved lurking in doorways.

"And you didn't tell me he was there?"

"He made no attempt to enter the lab."

That looked like it was true, Tony had to admit. Steve was standing just outside the doorway, so he hadn't triggered any of Friday's security protocols, and Tony had left the door open himself. 

"Twenty-three minutes?"

Steve kept looking at the floor, but didn't say anything.

He didn't have to. Tony remembered Steve's habit of coming into the lab--all the way inside, back then, but back then he was on the short list of people with full access--and watching Tony work for a while before making enough noise that Tony finally realized he was there. He was sure Steve remembered it just as well; the red staining the tips of Steve's ears confirmed it. 

Tony's own moment of weakness had gone unnoticed, or at the very least, Steve was pretending he didn't know Tony had slept next to him. Maybe that should have made him generous, should have made him pretend this was nothing, but he couldn't bring himself to be generous toward Steve. "I see you found the clothes, at least, before you decided to take a walk down memory lane."

Steve shrugged. "I like watching you work. That's not exactly a secret."

That didn't mean that Steve had the right to like it, not now. 

He and Steve hated one another. Steve needed to not let the fact that Tony was showing him the same sort of kindness he'd have shown a stray dog distract him from the truth. 

"Anyway," Steve continued, "what factory?"

"Oh, nothing," Tony said breezily. "I've just found where Sam and Wanda are being kept. Friday, show us that recording." 

With Tony narrating and explaining, Steve watched the security footage: the woman approaching the door, unlocking it, carrying the bag inside; then, fifty-seven minutes later, emerging and relocking the door. "That doesn't look like much in the way of evidence."

"Of course it's not solid evidence," Tony snapped. "But it's the best we have. While you were doing your sleeping beauty routine--and next time, try the guest room for that--I was working." 

He should have gotten more sleep. He wanted to yell at Steve; these days, he always did want to yell at Steve. But not right now, not about this. Right now he couldn't do what he needed to do and also think about his feelings toward Steve, and Sam and Wanda needed him.

Tony wasn't going to leave his former teammates to die, no matter what they'd done, because Tony wasn't Steve Rogers. He was going to have to do his best to shut down his emotions and focus on the job at hand. 

He summarized the search through real-estate records as quickly as he could; it was boring enough that his own eyes would be glazing over if he went into any detail. "Someone's been coming twice a day for the past five days," he finished up, "at around eight AM and eight PM, Lichtenbad time. Carrying at least one bag each time, sometimes two or three." 

Tony had tried to zoom in on the bags, but the footage was too grainy for him to be sure of what he was looking at. He'd thought he saw bottled water a few times, and something that might have been bread.

"Five days," Steve said. "That's two days after they were taken."

"The cameras were installed six days ago, probably when they were brought to the factory."

"That lines up," Steve admitted. "It's not certain--"

"But it's the best thing we have, and unless it's an elaborate decoy, I think I'm right." 

"When don't you?"

"At least I've been doing something."

Steve grimaced, and Tony realized he'd taken that as a complaint about the amount of time Steve had been sleeping, and not just a point about Tony's commitment to this mission. 

Well, let him think that. Tony hadn't meant it like that; Steve's face was looking less drawn and gray, and he wasn't swaying on his feet. The rest had done him a lot of good, and they were going to need Steve in decent condition. 

Besides, the kind of work Tony had been doing wasn't Steve's strong point. He'd have been great, if slow and methodical, at sifting through data; Steve had a sharp mind and an almost perfect memory.

But that was the kind of thing computers were even better at, and Steve wouldn't have been much use at setting up Friday's search algorithms. He wasn't used to having to define parameters carefully enough for them to make sense to a computer. Friday wasn't an ordinary computer, true, but the more precise the instructions you gave her, the better the outcome. 

If Steve wanted to get huffy, though, that wasn't Tony's problem. Steve's hurt feelings were his own concern.

"I appreciate it," Steve said, finally. "I know I haven't been much help."

"You're recovering," Tony said. "That has to be your priority. Speaking of that, how are you feeling?"

Steve shrugged. "Better than I have in a week," he said. "I think all my energy was going to staying mobile, and not to healing the underlying damage."

"It looks like they're feeding Sam and Wanda," Tony said, "so I think Hydra's planning to keep them alive for now. It's been a week. We can take a day or so more to get you back up to par."

"We need more intel, anyway," Steve said, "not to mention a plan."

"The plan is, we go in and get them." 

The place didn't look all that well guarded. There were probably a few nasty surprises inside the factory for the unauthorized and unprepared, but nothing the two of them couldn't handle. Hydra might be trying to get back to their former strength, but they still had a long way to go. This looked like a building they were trying not to call attention to, probably only with a minimal staff at best; Captain America and Iron Man could get in without much trouble. 

"We need more of a plan than that," Steve said. "I'm not losing either of them."

"We're not going to lose them," he said. "We won't be outnumbered the way Natasha was." There was no way some third-rate Hydra goons would have been able to take out the Black Widow if they hadn't had numbers heavily on their side. 

"And we're not going to just charge in there blindly, either. Look, Tony, I came to you because I need your help, but that doesn't mean I'm going to sit back and let you tell me what to do. They're my team. They're my responsibility. That means I'm the one making the decisions here."

"Absolutely, Captain," Tony said. "I understand. You want my tech, you want my resources, and you want to keep secrets and tell lies. I'm familiar with the process."

"I didn't lie to you," Steve said. "I never--"

Tony cut him off, because if he let Steve keep talking, he was going to lose his temper. "Did you look me straight in the eye and lie? No. Did you evade questions, avoid the issue, hide things from me because you wouldn't like my reaction, though? There's such a thing as a lie of omission, Steve, and I don't know what else to call it." 

Then he took a deep breath and forced himself to let it out slowly. "But fine. This is your mission. I'm here for backup. We'll get your people out. I need to make one thing clear, though: after that, we're done."

"Of course."

"No," Tony said. "We are _done_. I haven't decided whether I'm going to turn you in or not..." That was a lie, and he was sure that Steve knew it, but Tony didn't feel like admitting it now.

"But whatever I do," he went on, "from now on, you don't contact me, no matter how bad the situation is. The world's about to end and you need all hands on deck? Get Wanda to tell Vision. Call Rhodey." He folded his arms across his chest. "I'm not saying we won't help. I'm not even saying _I_ won't help. But you and I? We don't talk again, ever." 

Steve closed his eyes briefly, then stood a little straighter. "If that's what you want, Tony."

"What I want is--" What he wanted was for the last year--no, things had been going sour between them for longer than that--to have never happened. What he wanted was for Steve to have come to him for help in finding Barnes. For Steve to have told him as soon as he knew about Tony's parents. What he wanted...

"Yeah," he said sharply. "That's what I want. So let's start working on this plan of yours, because as soon as we get Sam and Wanda to safety, I can get back to my Steve-Rogers-free life."

Not to mention that he could get that phone out of the drawer six inches away from Steve's right hand, where Tony had tossed it last night so that Steve didn't find out that Tony had kept it on him all the time, not ready to give up that one final link to Steve. 

He was going to smash the phone this time. Really smash it, not just pick up a hammer, stand there looking at the phone for a while, and then put it down again. 

This might be just what he needed: a reminder of exactly why he was glad he and Steve had parted ways. Time had a tendency to smooth out a lot of the rough edges of memory. He'd remembered what happened, obviously, and why he was furious, but he'd been starting to let himself forget that even if none of that--the Accords, Berlin, Siberia, Barnes, even Ultron--had happened, he would still be better off without Steve around. 

"I'm going to need everything you have on this building," Steve said. "Floor plans, schematics of the local power grid, whatever you can get me." 

"Friday?" Tony said. "You heard what the captain needs. Give him all the data he requests that's relevant to this project. Anything else needs to come through me first." He smirked at Steve. "I'm sure you understand. I can't let someone of questionable loyalties have access to my servers."

"Of course," Steve said again. 

Damn him for sounding so reasonable. Why wasn't he angry. Why wasn't anything Tony was saying getting to him?

He knew the answer to that already. He couldn't hurt Steve, because Steve genuinely didn't care. To Steve, Tony was exactly what he'd said he was: a means to an end. Steve needed Stark technology, needed Friday, needed funding, needed backup from Iron Man. 

What he didn't need was Tony. 

He'd never needed Tony, and that had only become more true when he'd learned that Barnes was still alive. 

Fuck, Tony was sick of feeling this way. Maybe Happy was right, even though Happy would never have admitted that they'd been talking about more than the Captain America gear. That wasn't the kind of friends they were. 

He was right anyway. Tony needed to let all of this go. 

And that was what he was going to do. They'd rescue Sam and Wanda. If they could recover Natasha's remains and give her a proper burial, so much the better. And then Tony was going to walk away. Not just from Steve, but from all of this. 

He wasn't going to be able to retire Iron Man, not while he was still physically capable of putting on the armor. Even if the world would let him, he couldn't do it. But Iron Man could go back to being a solo act. He could leave the Avengers--completely, this time. 

Rhodey could run the team with Vision's help. They could recruit new people. They'd still have funding; Tony had set up an endowment so that even if something happened to him, the Avengers would still be able to operate. Tony would be willing to design tech for them at first, as a favor to Rhodey, but he wouldn't have to do that for long.

Give it a couple of years--five at the absolute outside--and the kid, if he wanted to join the team by then, would be able to invent anything they could ask for. Tony could walk away. 

He could walk away from Steve even sooner than that. He'd give Steve the suit and the shield as parting gifts; there was no way he could hand Steve over to the government, especially the government as represented by a piece of shit like Thaddeus Ross. 

He'd smash the phone, and then that would be it. He'd close the book on that part of his life, turn his back without any wishing, hoping, or regrets about what could have been. 

The best way that things could have ended between them--and they would have ended before long anyway--was a coldly civil parting, rather than a bloody fight. 

This was their chance to have that. They could rewrite things, shake hands and walk away from one another. 

That was what passed for a happy ending for them. Not Steve, standing in the doorway for twenty-three minutes because he loved to watch Tony work. Not Tony sliding into bed next to Steve because having Steve there made Tony miss him so much that it was almost a physical ache. 

He'd be fooling himself to think that those were anything but echoes, phantoms like the pain in an amputated limb. 

Where Steve was concerned, Tony was done fooling himself.

****

"We need to bring in more people," Steve argued, gesturing dramatically with his fork. 

Tony had decided that it was only minimally riskier to have dinner delivered than it was to just have Steve in his house, period. It wasn't like the delivery driver was going to think anything about Tony Stark ordering enough food for several people. Given his reputation, they'd probably assume he was having an orgy and decided to take a break for pad thai. 

Not that Tony actually had orgies. Hell, these days, it was tough enough to even find one person to sleep with who you could trust wasn't an agent of Hydra or some other group of nut jobs bent on world domination. 

The world didn't need to know that, though. All they saw was that the gossip sites reported that Tony and Pepper had called it quits, and therefore Tony was back to his carefree playboy lifestyle. 

Tony had helped that along a little. He'd been seen with various women on his arm: a couple of young actresses who thought the publicity would help them; an agent who'd tried to convert him to Scientology; a singer who'd just emailed Tony the ridiculously overwrought lyrics of her new song about their "relationship" to make sure he was in on the joke. He'd been careful not to give the impression that he was serious about any of them. People didn't want to think that he might have actual human feelings, and that was fine by him. 

At least when the people thinking that were strangers.

"Okay," Tony said. "We need to bring in more people. Too bad that we don't have more people. Your people need to be rescued. I don't have people, not for something like this."

"What about War Machine? I know Rhodey's still flying missions, I'm not that out of touch."

Damn right, Rhodey was still flying missions. They'd have to pry him out of the War Machine armor if they wanted him to give it up. 

But he wasn't going on _this_ mission. "I'm not risking him on this."

"Shouldn't that be his call?" 

"No, it shouldn't. If something happens to me, I need to know that he'll still be around to take over from Iron Man." Not to mention that if Steve's plan led to Tony being captured or hurt, Rhodey would be his best chance of rescue. 

"Besides," he went on, "bad things happen to my friends around you. He was lucky last time; he's still alive. He might not be so lucky again."

Steve opened his mouth like he was going to argue, but then just sighed. "All right, not War Machine. Vision?"

"Is on a mission for the UN right now. Very clandestine. I don't even have a way to contact him." He could probably find a way, if he really wanted to, and with Wanda held prisoner, Vision was human enough that he would drop everything to come to their aid. 

But Vision was doing a lot to rehabilitate the Avengers' image, and Tony didn't want to take that away from him and Rhodey, just to make Steve happy. 

Their agreement had been that Tony would help him, not that Tony would risk any of his few remaining friends for someone he didn't even trust anymore. 

"Don't even think about mentioning the kid," Tony said. "He has homework."

"And you wouldn't even dream of pulling him away from his studies for a fight," Steve said dryly. 

"Not for you, I wouldn't." In hindsight, he knew he'd made a mistake taking Peter to Berlin, anyway. "So unless you have some allies I don't know about, we're back to you and me. I guess you could go to Wakanda and pick up your boyfriend, if you don't think Hydra would take control of him five seconds after they laid eyes on him."

"Would you stop saying that?" Steve snapped. 

"What? I'm not saying he'd change sides voluntarily, but that's what those trigger words are for."

"The Wakandans have deprogrammed him," Steve said, then shook his head. "And that's not even what I meant. Could you stop calling him my boyfriend? You sound like a twelve-year-old."

"What do you prefer, then? 'Life partner'? 'Lover'? 'Longtime companion' was popular a few decades ago, if you want something a little less modern." 

Tony looked down at his plate instead of meeting Steve's eyes. It still stung that Steve had set him aside so easily, without even an explanation. Pushing at Steve to finally admit the truth might not be the kindest thing Tony could do, but Steve owed him that much. 

"_Friend_," Steve said through gritted teeth.

"It's the twenty-first century," Tony told him. "You don't have to hide behind 'friend' anymore. You can at least add 'with benefits' to it, if he isn't into romance."

"Damn it, Tony, what the hell is wrong with you?"

Two four-letter words in a single sentence; he must have really touched a nerve. "What's wrong with _you_? After everything Barnes has gone through because of you, don't you think he deserves to be more than your dirty little secret? Or is it just that you're willing to let half the world think you're a traitor, but you couldn't stand it if they knew you're queer?" 

"Stop it, Tony," Steve snarled, letting his fork fall to his plate with a loud clatter. His fists clenched, and Tony braced himself, waiting for a blow that never came. 

Instead, Steve got himself enough under control to say, "Bucky and I aren't--we never were--anything but friends. Good friends. He's my brother in everything but blood, so obviously, I love him. But I'm not in love with him, and I never was. And before you say anything about that not being a requirement, no, I've never slept with him, either." 

Tony snorted. "You really expect me to believe that? I've seen how you react to the first hint of a threat to him."

"Yeah?" Steve said. "I saw how you reacted to Rhodey being hurt. Should I assume you're fucking him?"

Oh, yeah, he was really getting under Steve's skin. Steve didn't tend to use strong language in public, but in private was another matter--and in bed, when properly motivated, Steve could be filthy. But he didn't swear this often, and this crudely, unless he was about to lose his temper entirely. 

Tony was tempted to push his advantage, but as much as he hated to admit it, Steve might have something resembling a point. "You're serious?"

"Yes, of course I'm serious. Bucky's my family." Steve took a deep breath. "I've been involved with two people in my life, Tony. One of them was Peggy Carter. You do the math."

This changed nothing. It didn't matter whether Steve and Bucky had ever been lovers. All that mattered was that Steve had betrayed Tony for Bucky's sake; Steve had been willing to leave him to die to protect Bucky. 

It didn't matter that it wasn't a case of throwing away the new lover for a chance to reunite with the old one. It didn't matter that, if the situation had been reversed, Tony would have done anything to protect Rhodey from Steve, because Rhodey was the only family Tony had. 

None of that mattered, because letting it matter got in the way of hating Steve. Hating Steve made everything so much simpler. It hurt like hell, but it painted everything in black and white, and Tony wasn't ready to let that go. 

"It doesn't matter." The words came out louder than he'd intended them to, and he wasn't entirely sure who they were meant to convince.

****

After their conversation about Barnes, dinner became a silent affair. Tony had pushed his food around for a little while before giving up the pretense that he was going to eat. Steve had devoured most of the remaining food, but with a grim determination that made Tony think he was only choking it down so that he'd be in shape to set off from Lichtenbad soon. 

When most of the takeout containers were empty, Tony got up and started clearing things away. "I'm going to start some coffee," he said. "Do you want some?"

"Yes, thanks." Steve sounded surprised, like Tony hadn't been attempting to be a decent host even when his guest was completely unwelcome. 

He'd been trying, dammit. It was Steve who kept making things difficult. That had always been the way of things between them, though. Tony might fuck up, but he kept trying; Steve, on the other hand, had decided to keep secrets and tell lies and treat their relationship as an afterthought. 

He'd just started the coffee when his phone buzzed. He looked at the number and caught Steve's eye. "Ross," he said. "Keep quiet." 

He answered the call. "Stark here. What can I do for you, Secretary?" 

"I've just had some disturbing intel," Ross said. "Captain Rogers has returned to the United States." 

"Okay," Tony said. "And you're telling me this because...?"

"I wanted to remind you that he's a criminal. If he comes to you for help, makes contact with you in any way--"

Tony cut him off. "I haven't heard from Steve Rogers since he left me to die in Siberia," he said, "which is the same thing I've told you every time you ask me about him. We're not on good terms. I'm sure he knows that if he did reach out to me, the best-case scenario would be that I'd do what I could to detain him until he could be arrested."

He looked Steve straight in the eye as he spoke. "If I do hear from him, I'll let you know, obviously, but it's my belief that he's smart enough to know what kind of help he'd get from me." 

Steve gave him a slight smile. In spite of himself, Tony couldn't help returning it. It gave him something to do other than listen to the bluster at the other end of the phone. 

"Yes, of course, Secretary Ross," he said when Ross finally started to wind down. "Good luck with that. I have to run, though. The triplets are waiting for me in the hot tub." He disconnected the call before Ross could say anything else and tossed the phone down on the counter. 

"Triplets, huh?" 

"Don't you think it's what he'd expect from me? He'll be too busy simultaneously disapproving of my decadent lifestyle and envying the hell out of me to suspect that I just wanted to get rid of him."

"_I'm_ simultaneously disapproving of your decadent lifestyle and envying you," Steve said, still smiling a little. "But honestly, thank you. I know I have no reason to expect you to protect me from Ross. Especially since you're putting yourself at risk by shielding me from him."

"I'm not afraid of Ross," Tony scoffed. "If I didn't loathe him so much, I might have considered telling him I'd seen you. But I don't think you're a threat to the general public--" no, just to Tony himself-- "and I hate being on the same side as Ross, to be honest. So at least for now..." He shrugged. 

"For now is all I'm asking for," Steve said. "Once the others are safe, I won't put up a fight."

Did Steve really believe that Tony would turn him in once this was over? Did Tony even still want Steve to believe it? God, everything had seemed so much clearer a day ago. 

That was the dangerous thing about Steve. Having him around was making it harder for Tony to remember why he hated him. He didn't forget anything Steve had done, but it all seemed more reasonable. Or maybe it was that his own actions started seeming _less_ reasonable. 

They needed to get this over with. Tony wasn't going to turn Steve and the others in, but he'd been serious when he'd said this needed to be the last time he and Steve ever spoke. 

Otherwise he might be tempted to try to repair things between them, at least a little, and then he'd be setting himself up for Steve to lie to him again. 

"Yeah, well," Tony said, shrugging again, "I'm wondering how Ross found out you were in the country. How careful were you crossing the border?"

"Not careful enough, obviously," Steve said. "I did my best to drop out of sight completely once I was out of Lichtenbad, but I'm sort of recognizable."

"Yeah, just a little." Steve did look slightly different--leaner, older than a year should have made him look--and the longer hair and the beard would help, too. But everyone knew what Captain America looked like, and Steve wasn't good at being inconspicuous. No matter how much he tried not to call attention to himself, people noticed him. 

Tony would have known Steve anywhere, but that was different. Tony would always know Steve anywhere, no matter what changed, no matter what happened between them. 

"But," he said, because he didn't like the direction his thoughts were taking, "let's take a look and see if we can track down the source of his intel. It might be helpful to know just how accurate it is."

"What do you want me to do?"

Tony poured out a couple of mugs of coffee and said, "You're good at pattern recognition. We're going to be sifting through a bunch of internet traffic and phone records; Friday will do the initial search, but she's still going to be passing a lot of it through to us. I want to see if we can figure out who gave that information to Ross and how much else they might know." 

"Let me guess," Steve said. "We're going to need more coffee." 

In spite of himself, Tony laughed. "So much more coffee, yeah. It's going to be a long, boring night." 

"A little boredom sounds pretty good to me right now," Steve said. "I've had enough excitement in the past week or so to last me for a while."

"Hopefully not too long." Tony blew on his coffee, then took a sip. "I want to be ready to move on that factory as soon as possible." 

"Eager to get rid of me?" Steve was smiling as he said that, but it faded quickly, probably when he remembered that Tony had every reason to want to get rid of him. 

Maybe being around Tony made it hard for Steve to remember that they hated one another, too. 

Tony decided to give the guy the smallest of breaks. "Eager to get our friends back," he said. Not that Sam and Wanda had ever really been Tony's friends, they hadn't known one another well enough for that, but close enough. They'd been part of the team. It counted. 

"Agreed," Steve said. "Let's get started."

****

"I didn't actually think Ross was stupid," Tony said, draining the dregs of the cold coffee at the bottom of his cup. He was going to have to go start a third pot soon. "No, okay. I definitely thought he was stupid, but I didn't think he was this kind of stupid." 

"Did Friday break the encryption on that message?" Steve straightened up, rolling his shoulders to work the kinks out. 

They'd found--no, Tony was going to be scrupulously fair here. Steve had found a heavily-encrypted message sent to Ross just an hour before his call to Tony. While Friday worked on cracking the code, Tony had traced the origin of the message to somewhere in northern Lichtenbad, which was too much of a coincidence for either of them to brush off. 

They'd kept going through file after file of communications records--and those were only the ones Friday had flagged for further investigation; she'd sifted through at least fifty times as many--just in case it turned out to be nothing, but Tony would have been willing to bet that the encrypted message was what they were looking for. 

And he'd have won that bet, too. "Yeah, take a look." He had Friday project the decrypted file so they both could see it. 

Steve frowned immediately. "How is Hydra sending encrypted messages to Ross? I mean, I understand how they could send them. What I don't know is how they expect him to be able to read them. Is Ross--no. I don't like him, but he's not Hydra."

"The message doesn't read like they know he's an ally," Tony said. "I think it's more likely that they have someone in the State Department. I'm sure Ross doesn't do his own decryption." 

"We should probably let him know." 

"He should probably be able to figure it out for himself," Tony said. "But let's worry about that later. Have you read it yet? It's the message that's the problem."

"They want to trade for Sam?"

"Sam Wilson for an unspecified Hydra agent who is currently the guest of the U.S. government. And it's Hydra who told Ross that you were headed back here. He's probably trying to verify that before he decides what to do about the rest of the message."

"How can there be any question?" Steve demanded. "It's Hydra. You don't think he's seriously considering negotiating with them, do you?"

"I don't know," Tony admitted. "I had Friday double check; Lichtenbad doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S., so if Sam's being held there, Ross can't get him back even though there's a warrant for his arrest. And they didn't sign the Sokovia Accords, either, so that's not an angle he can use. If he wants Sam, he'll have to make a deal with Hydra."

Steve's face had frozen at the mention of the Accords. Of course they were still a sore point, but also, of course Steve couldn't expect them never to come up in conversation, particularly when they were talking about Ross. 

Then Steve sighed. "No mention of Wanda."

"If you were Hydra, and you'd managed to give someone magic powers, wouldn't you want them back? They're not going to let Wanda get away if they can avoid it. Even if they can't get her to cooperate with them, at least she can't be used against them that way."

"I still can't convince myself that Ross is going to make a deal for Sam."

"I don't know," Tony said again, a little more sharply. "I know that the four of you having evaded the authorities--not to mention successfully destroying several remaining Hydra cells--is a thorn in Ross's side. He wants you, more than any of the others, but he might think Sam is a good way to flush you out into the open. He's obviously not wrong about that, either." 

"I'm not that gullible." 

"No? Once the others were captured, you came straight here--even though it wasn't easy to get to me--to ask for help from someone who, as you were well aware, hates your guts. Is it really that unreasonable to assume that you'd turn yourself in if it meant Sam could go free, or could get a deal for a couple of years of house arrest like Clint got?" 

Steve considered for a minute. "I guess not."

"So you're going to need to come up with a plan B. Plan A is obviously the one where we rescue Sam and Wanda from that factory in Lichtenbad."

"And plan B, we rescue Wanda from Lichtenbad and get Sam out of prison here?"

"Exactly. On the bright side, with plan B, we have more options. Like an entire fleet of very expensive attorneys who can argue that Sam was led astray by a charismatic figure he'd spent his entire life admiring." Tony would hire them, too. He wouldn't object to something like house arrest for Sam, but he didn't need to rot in the Raft or somewhere even worse. 

"If that's what it takes, I'll turn myself in." 

"Yeah, but maybe let's try to not have it come to that." Tony regretted the words as soon as he'd said them. He'd been trying to leave Steve in doubt as to whether or not Tony would really hand him over to the authorities. He'd definitely wanted Steve to think Tony believed that Steve belonged in prison, whether or not Tony was prepared to be the one to turn him in. 

"I violated the Sokovia Accords," Steve pointed out. "The ones you were pushing me to sign. I'm a wanted criminal in over a hundred countries. Isn't that what you think should happen to me?"

Tony gritted his teeth. "The Accords... aren't working out the way I expected." The last he'd heard, seven countries had withdrawn from the Accords in the past six months, all places where Steve and his team had destroyed an active Hydra cell even without official permission to do so. 

Besides, Hank Pym was now wanted for violating the Accords because Lang had stolen some of his equipment and taken it to Berlin. Pym was an asshole, and every single time they'd met, Tony had wanted to punch the guy in his teeth, but that didn't make Pym responsible for what happened when someone stole his tech. 

There were a lot of people out there trying to get their hands on Tony's tech. Some of them succeeded, at least temporarily. What they did with that equipment after they stole it wasn't his fault. 

And even on top of that, there were a lot of things in the Accords that Tony hadn't intended to be there--things he hadn't even realized were there when he'd signed them. Restrictions on technology development. Restrictions on AI development. _Tracking bracelets_ for people with powers. 

He and Bruce had fucked up by creating Ultron, and he'd been so desperate to correct his mistakes, to make up for the terrible things that had happened because of him, that he'd fucked up again by helping people like Ross create the Sokovia Accords. By being so eager to sign them that he hadn't thought about the consequences, hadn't dug in deeply enough to see what they were really going to do. 

Tony didn't know how to say all of that to Steve, not when their stances on the Accords had been part of what tore them apart in the first place. 

He rubbed a hand over his face, trying to stifle a yawn. "I still think we need oversight. Not everyone with powers--or with the equivalent in technology--is you, Steve. Not all of us have the kind of moral compass you do. Even if we decide that we want to be the good guys, we don't always know what that means."

Not even Steve had the kind of moral compass he thought he did, in Tony's opinion, but that was too much to get into right now. 

"You know better than you think you do," Steve said. "You're a good man, Tony, even if you can't see it." 

"I wasn't talking about myself," he lied. "But all right, you want to go there? What about me? I nearly ended the human race because I thought I knew what was best for everyone. Ultron's on me. You don't think I need oversight?"

"Not in a way that means you can't help people when they need it. And not..." Steve got up, pacing back and forth in front of Tony. "They're putting trackers on people, Tony. Anyone with powers that can't be taken away by confiscating their tech has to be tracked. Did you know that when you signed? Did you want that?"

He should have known when he signed. He'd overlooked it, too blinded by the drive to fix his mistakes. The kid was violating the Accords; he wasn't wearing a tracker, and the UN had no idea who Spider-Man really was. Tony didn't know how he'd managed to get away with it for this long. He'd go to bat for Peter, shoulder as much of the blame as he could, but...

"What about people who have a good reason to protect their identities?" Steve went on, like he'd followed Tony's line of thought. "People like Clint, who was trying to keep his family safe. They're all required to turn their names in to the UN. They're supposed to be classified, but you know how often classified data gets stolen."

"I know," Tony said. "I didn't realize at the time; I didn't think through all the implications. But I know now, and like I said, we need some kind of oversight, but not that."

"If you'd said that a year ago," Steve said, "we wouldn't be here now."

"Oh, we would have been," Tony said. "You might not be a fugitive, but you and I? We'd be right where we are." This wasn't just about the Accords. He and Steve had disagreed before. Nothing so dramatic, obviously, or as serious, but even disagreeing about the Accords wouldn't have driven this kind of wedge between them. 

They'd have been on better terms when they reached Siberia, but Steve still would have been lying to him, and Tony still wouldn't be able to forgive him for it. 

"I'm sorry," Steve said, coming to a stop in front of Tony. Tony set his jaw and looked up at him in a silent challenge. "Not for trying to protect Bucky from you; you're never getting an apology for that. I wasn't going to stand aside and let someone I care about die."

He looked down, away from Tony's eyes. "I wasn't going to stand aside and let someone I care about become a murderer, either."

"It's not like both of us don't have plenty of blood on our hands."

"Not like that. Not because we looked at someone who wasn't trying to harm anyone at the time and thought, 'that person should be dead,' and then made it happen." 

The people who died in Sokovia were his fault. The people who had died because of Stark Industries weapons, at least since Tony took over the company, were his fault. And that was just the beginning. 

Tony had so much blood on his hands. One more death would make a difference. He could see the distinction Steve was making, but in his case, it didn't really matter. 

"So what are you sorry for?" he asked, because he didn't want to say any of that to Steve. He hadn't even been able to talk to Rhodey about it, and Rhodey was his best friend. He'd never tried to talk to Pepper about it, either, which may have been part of their problem. 

So there was no way he was going to talk about this with Steve. 

"Not being honest with you. I should have told you I was looking for Bucky. I should have told you once I found out about your parents." 

"What would it have changed?" 

It might have changed everything. Over time, Tony had come to accept the fact that no matter what it looked like, James Barnes hadn't really been the one to kill his parents. There hadn't been an actual person inside Barnes' body at the time.

If Tony had found out under better, calmer circumstances, when Barnes had been nowhere around, things might have been different. 

He wouldn't have liked the guy, or trusted him, but he might not have wanted him dead. 

"I wouldn't have been keeping secrets from you. You don't think that would have changed _something_?"

"Everything," he blurted out without thinking. "It would have changed everything." 

He'd have been able to trust Steve, even if he still wouldn't have trusted Barnes. He and Steve might have even been on better terms when the Accords had been written, because Steve wouldn't have been trying to hide things from him, and then maybe they'd have been able to come up with a compromise. 

Steve gave him a sad smile and sank back into his chair. "That's what I was afraid of. I was almost hoping you'd tell me that there was no way it'd have changed things, that you'd still hate me just as much as you do now." 

Did he hate Steve now? He had to. He'd been hating Steve for over a year. There was no reason to stop just because Steve was here, because Steve had apologized. "We'll never know," he said, "but why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I was afraid we'd end up just where we did in Siberia. I didn't want to have to try to protect my best friend from my--from you." 

"We might have," Tony conceded. "I can't say you being honest with me wouldn't have changed things, but if he'd been there when I found out, or if you'd found him before you convinced me of how thoroughly he'd been brainwashed... I might still have reacted the same way. Even though it really wouldn't do any good, would it?" 

He laughed a little. "The people who murdered my parents would still have gotten away with it. Even if I'd killed Barnes, I'd just have taken out some poor bastard who didn't even know who _he_ was at the time, let alone who my parents were, beyond some names in a file."

"That was what I should have tried to make you understand." Steve lifted his hand, like he was about to reach for Tony, but stopped himself. "If I'd told you earlier, I'd have had time, I could have--" He must have realized his hand was still suspended in the air, because he dropped it to his side. 

"It doesn't matter what you could have done," Tony said. "All that matters is what you did." Then, feeling generous, he amended that to, "What we both did. That's the reality we have to live with."

"If Bucky were here right now, would you still want to kill him?"

"Maybe," Tony admitted. "I don't think so, but maybe. I wouldn't do it, though. It's not the answer, even if I hate that he's never going to face any consequences for anything he did. He's safe in Wakanda, where no one can touch him." 

Steve pushed his chair back, turning so that he could glare directly at Tony. "You don't think decades spent being brainwashed, tortured, and used as a puppet by some of the most evil monsters humanity has ever produced count as 'consequences'?"

Maybe they did. And Barnes was currently restricted to one small country that wasn't his home. Not the same as prison, but still limiting. 

He didn't want to say any of that to Steve, so instead, he just shrugged. "We should get back to the plan."

"Which plan? A or B?"

"A. Whatever happens with Sam, we're going to have to get Wanda out of that factory, so that's the most efficient starting point."

"Let's look at the factory itself," Steve suggested. He obviously wasn't any more eager to keep ripping open old wounds and examining what oozed out of them than Tony was. "We'll have to work out how we're going to get there in the first place without being detected, but for right now, let's put that on the back burner and work out how we're going to find them and get them out.

"Sure. You're the star-spangled man with the plan," Tony said, just to make Steve grimace at the reference to his old USO days. "Friday, put up the floor plan of that factory." 

A few years ago, he'd have hummed a few bars of the song just to be sure he got on Steve's nerves. These days, they could get under one another's skin without even trying, so it would be a waste of effort.

****

They hadn't been able to turn up anything that looked like a reply from Ross about the deal Hydra had offered, so for the time being, they'd decided to focus strictly on the rescue. They could plan a way to get Sam out of wherever Ross put him once they found out whether Ross was even going to try to bargain for him. 

Tony had another moment of disconcerting role reversal with Steve around midnight, when he realized how little sleep he'd had and decided he needed to do something about that. "You probably should sleep, too," he told Steve. 

"I've done almost nothing but sleep and eat since I got here."

"And you're exhausted and still recovering from some injuries that probably would have killed a normal person days ago. Go to bed. In the guest room, this time." Where Tony wouldn't be tempted to sleep next to him. 

"Get some rest if you need it," Steve said, "but I think I should probably--"

"Friday," Tony said, "Captain Rogers has no access to any files stored on a Stark server, no access to the local network, and no access through you to the internet, until I say otherwise, or until eight AM tomorrow, whichever comes first." He smirked at Steve. "Now go to bed." 

"I should have realized," Steve said. "You wouldn't trust me with anything sensitive unless you're here to keep an eye on me."

"What?" Tony spluttered. "I already restricted your access to anything 'sensitive,' remember? This is about you damn near killing yourself to get here. I don't want to run a one-man rescue operation, so I need you functional. I wouldn't have put in a failsafe for if I oversleep--" or if he forgot, or if he did what he was planning to do and drank himself into a stupor, and then wasn't sober enough to function by the time Steve woke up-- "if my goal was to block your access to the data you need to plan this mission, would I?"

Steve closed his eyes for a moment, and then shook his head. "I'm not thinking clearly. Must need that sleep more than I thought I did." He turned and went upstairs without saying anything else. 

Tony waited just long enough to grab a bottle from the bar, then followed Steve up. 

His bedroom was one hundred percent free of any super soldiers, wanted fugitives or ex-lovers.

Just Tony and his bottle of Scotch, the way he wanted it. Though really, the Scotch deserved better treatment than what it was going to get: to be swigged straight from the bottle until Tony was drunk enough that he could pass out.

****


	3. Chapter 3

****

Tony got about four hours' sleep before Friday woke him. "Secretary Ross has called three times already," she said. "I can inform him that you aren't taking calls, but under the circumstances--"

"Yeah, I get it. Thanks, Friday." Tony might hang up on Ross, or put him on hold until the other man gave up. He'd definitely be rude and uncooperative. Ross would be expecting all those things. But right now, he couldn't risk the chance that just not answering the phone, after he'd been warned that Steve was back in the country, would give Ross an excuse to send someone to "check up" on him. Purely out of concern that he was being held hostage, or worse, by a desperate criminal, of course. 

"Do you have any idea what time it is here?" Tony said, as soon as the call came through. 

"Quit your bitching, Stark," Ross growled. 

"No, I'm serious, what time is it? I don't want to turn on a light and wake one of the twins." 

"I thought you said they were triplets."

Shit. He hadn't been listening to himself. "Yeah, turns out I was drunk enough to be seeing double. Just out of the one eye, though, it was the craziest thing." Tony sat up without turning on the lights. Before Ross could say anything else about Tony's nonsensical chatter, he said, "It has to be important for you to be calling me this early. It's what, eight in the morning there?"

"Not quite. But some of us believe in getting up early and putting in a full day's work." 

"That's why I never joined the military," Tony said. "I don't like mornings. But now that I'm up, what can I do for you, Secretary?"

"I wanted to update you on Rogers," Ross said. "It's been confirmed, he's in the U.S. Came in over the Canadian border somewhere in British Columbia, so he's in your neck of the woods."

"The West Coast is a little big to be a 'neck of the woods,' Ross. The border's over a thousand miles away. That's only the same neck if you're a giraffe."

"Do you really think it's plausible that he wouldn't be headed your way?"

Tony hoped it was plausible that Steve was remaining right where he was, sound asleep, until Tony got rid of Ross and they could get back to work on the rescue plan. Or, more accurately, Steve worked on the plans. Tony's job as of last night was, whenever Steve came up with something they'd need to do, to figure out how they were going to accomplish it. It was a familiar rhythm, something they'd done so many times back in the old days, and it was a little unnerving that they'd slipped back into it so easily. 

"Why would he do that?" Tony asked, letting his weariness seep into his voice. "We barely managed to get along when we were on the same team. Steve may have friends somewhere on the West Coast, but I'm not one of them."

Then, as though he'd just realized something, he said, "Speaking of friends, did the rest of his team cross the border with him?"

"Not that I know of." 

"Do we have any idea where they are? They're capable of causing plenty of trouble without Rogers. Romanoff could assume command without batting an eye. This Steve Rogers sighting could just be a distraction."

"Let me worry about your former colleagues," Ross said. "The UN and the CIA both keep tabs on them, never fear."

"So where are they?" Tony repeated. "I don't want to wake up one morning to find Rogers at my front door, but I'd like it even less if he was just keeping me busy while the rest of his team raid my labs to steal tech from me."

That was sort of true; he hadn't wanted to find Steve at his door, and he didn't want anyone to steal his tech. But mostly, he wanted to know what Ross was up to, whether he was going to make that deal to get Sam back in U.S. custody. 

He was sure Ross didn't really want Sam. He wasn't enhanced; confiscating his tech would put an end to the Falcon. Sam's first exo-suit had been Air Force issue, so even if they wanted to reopen the project, they could work from the original design. 

But Sam was Steve's friend, and Ross wanted to lock Steve up and throw away the key, not to mention using him as a lab rat to recreate the serum, so he'd want Sam for bait. 

For all Steve's talk about making plans and developing strategies, Tony suspected that the minute Steve felt personally, directly responsible for what was happening to Sam, he'd throw all that planning out the window and start trying to punch his way through the problem. 

Tony wasn't going to let that happen. That wasn't what he'd agreed to help Steve do. He was here to make sure that Steve had the best possible chance of getting Sam and Wanda away from Hydra's custody--and then, although he hadn't admitted it to Steve yet, to help them all disappear again. 

He was pretty sure Steve knew he wouldn't turn them in, but they hadn't talked about what Steve and his team were going to do after this was all over. 

Tony was prepared to work out a way to discreetly give them the chance to "steal" a new jet, and to cover their tracks enough that they could evade Ross. Even if he hadn't been having doubts about the reality of the Accords, Ross was an asshole, and Tony wasn't going to do a damn thing to help him. 

"Rogers' team was last seen somewhere in Europe," Ross said, which Tony knew already. "There's no indication that they're with him now. He's the only one you have to worry about."

Tony gave a loud snort of disgust. "The day I'm afraid of Steve Rogers is the day I hang up my armor." He hadn't even been afraid of Steve that day in Siberia, though that was probably because he'd been too angry to be scared. 

"Getting back to the point, there's still a chance Rogers could be making his way to you to ask you for help," Ross said. "If he does, go along with him, then contact me."

"Absolutely," Tony said, a little impressed with how smoothly the lie came out. "I really don't think he'll be dumb enough to turn to me, but if he does, you'll be the first to know."

Just a few days ago, he really would have thought it'd be stupid of Steve to come to him. But here he was, lying to Ross--well, he couldn't stand Ross, so that didn't take a lot of encouragement--and shielding a wanted criminal. Working side-by-side with Steve, just like it was back in the good old days, and the team had a mission. 

God, that had been so damn long ago. Now he and Steve hated one another, Bruce was missing, and Thor was off in outer space. Clint was under house arrest, and Natasha--God. If he believed Steve, Natasha was dead.

Steve might have been a liar, but Tony didn't see a reason to doubt him about this. 

But for a few minutes last night, it had felt like none of that had happened, and apparently those few minutes of self-delusion had been enough for him to commit himself completely to this rescue--not only getting Steve's people away from Hydra, but away from Ross, too. 

He really wasn't sounding like a man who was completely done with Steve Rogers, forever, was he? 

Tony ended the call with Ross, not even paying attention to the mechanical replies he gave to the other man before hanging up. As he set his phone down, he saw that he had multiple message notifications--text, email, and at least one more missed call than the three from Ross. 

Whatever they were, they'd have to wait until this was over. Tony didn't have time for them right now. 

Right now, he had to face the probability that he was _fucked_. Steve had gotten into his system, and now no matter what Tony did, he couldn't get rid of him. He'd thought he was getting along just fine, and all it had taken was a day or two in Steve's presence for everything to come flooding back. 

All the more reason to set their plans in motion. The sooner Steve was out of his life, the less likely it was that he'd decide that he was tired of being angry at Steve. 

"Friday, is Steve awake?"

"For the past hour, boss. He's in the gym. Do you want me to give him a message?"

"No, that's fine. Just go ahead and remove all the access restrictions, in case he wants to get started before I'm downstairs." It wasn't six AM yet; Steve should be asleep. Sure, Steve was generally a morning person, but he needed more sleep than normal right now. 

Which was only Tony's problem because he needed Steve to finish healing before they set off for Lichtenbad, obviously. He wasn't worried.

Tony stood under a hot shower until he felt a little more alert, then got dressed and headed downstairs. Steve wasn't in the main living area, so Tony only paused to start some coffee before heading toward the gym. 

The gym in this house wasn't very large, intended as it was for only one person--well, two, when he'd had the plans drawn up, but Pepper had never even been here. He'd ordered the equipment before the team had fallen apart, though, and just in case he'd ever had one of the team as a house guest, Tony had chosen the same machines he'd put in the gyms in the tower and the compound, custom built to accommodate both normal physiology and the super-strong or super-fast. 

Steve was on the treadmill when Tony opened the door, running hard enough that he'd worked up a sweat. A chance to rest and enough to eat had him looking more like his usual self; the serum had converted a lot of his caloric intake over the past day or so straight into muscle tissue. He might not be back to a hundred percent of his full strength, but he'd be able to handle a fight. 

Tony hung back and watched for a little while, an indulgence he probably shouldn't have allowed himself. This might be his last chance, though, and while he still didn't want to believe that he missed Steve, he'd go far enough as to admit that he missed looking at Steve. And since Steve's back was to him, he could get away with it for now. 

After a couple of minutes, though, Steve realized he wasn't alone in the room and stopped the treadmill. 

"Losing your edge, Cap," Tony said. "I've been here for at least three minutes."

"No," Steve said. "Four and a half. I noticed when you came in; I just didn't mind." He grabbed a towel from the nearby weight bench and wiped the sweat from his forehead and neck. 

"Don't you think that's a little too trusting of you? What if I'd been an intruder?"

Steve sat down on the weight bench and opened a bottle of water, drinking deeply. "Then Friday would have alerted us, and I wouldn't have gone on with my run. Also, I knew it was you, Tony. It hasn't been that long." 

"You probably shouldn't trust me that much, either, after the last time we met."

"I do, though." Steve sighed. "But what you mean is that _you_ don't trust _me_. I can't blame you. I just--" 

He broke off, shaking his head. "I don't mean you any harm. I need your help, but it can end here. You don't even have to come with me to Lichtenbad. I'll get Sam and Wanda out myself." 

"I said I'd come with you, and I will," Tony said. 

"And then it's over. I won't contact you again."

Which was exactly what Tony had asked for, so that shouldn't be disappointing. He shouldn't be thinking that they might be able to work through this and get to a point to where they were--whatever the hell they'd been to one another; Tony wasn't sure anymore what that had been--again. 

"And I do trust you," he said. "At least, I trust you not to knowingly lead me into some kind of trap. I don't trust you to tell me the whole truth, but can you blame me?" 

"I won't keep things from you again," Steve offered. 

"You probably will," Tony said. "You like to think you can handle everything yourself, and that leads to not telling people things like 'I'm looking for my brainwashed assassin former BFF.'" Then he caught himself. "I mean, you probably would, except I'm not going to give you the chance." 

Steve put the cap back on his water bottle and got up, giving Tony a strange little smile. 

"What's that weird look for?"

"You just referred to Bucky as my BFF." 

"It's an expression. It means--"

"I know what it means. I just can't believe you used it without a trace of irony."

"I might possibly spend too much time on Twitter," Tony acknowledged. "I have a secret account I use to troll physicists." 

"It's not that secret. You use a photo of Iron Man as your profile picture." 

"Come on," Tony said, before he asked Steve how the hell he knew about that. Before he had to acknowledge that Steve apparently hadn't been trying to forget about Tony's existence, to the point that he'd clearly gotten someone to show him how to use Twitter. "Let's get you something to eat so we can get back to work." 

Steve skipped out on food-preparation duties by insisting that he needed a shower, but rejoined Tony before the meal was ready and did, at least, help to set the table. Over breakfast, Tony filled Steve in on the call he'd gotten from Ross, and Steve shared a few ideas he'd had for their rescue plan. 

"I think we're going to have to assume that Ross is at least considering making that deal with Hydra," Steve said. "He's going to use Sam as bait unless we get there before he does." 

"If he knows, or finds out, where they're holding Sam, he might use that as bait; he'd have to know you'll come after him, and he could be waiting for you."

"I thought Lichtenbad didn't extradite prisoners to the U.S.?"

"No, and I doubt the Lichtenbaders are going to let him send anyone in after you--but they might let the UN come in." 

"So that'll be one more bunch of people trying to catch us," Steve said as he spread jam on his last piece of toast. "We'll have to manage."

"I'm going to need a few hours in the shop today," Tony said. "Most of what we need, I can either buy--it's on the way--or modify from existing tech, but there are a couple of things I'm going to have to build from scratch. Even if it's on the market, it's illegal."

"Everything I'm asking you to do is illegal," Steve said. "You know that." 

"Yeah, I do," Tony admitted. "Like I said yesterday, I've had some time to rethink some of my opinions." Pretty much everything Spider-Man did was illegal, but Tony didn't hesitate to keep mentoring Peter. He was already screwed, if Ross and the UN committee chose. 

He forced a smile. "Besides, a lot of my tech has always only been legal because nobody's ever thought to make it illegal." 

They'd both finished eating by now, so Steve started stacking plates in the dishwasher. Tony let him; setting the table was nowhere near equivalent to cooking enough food for Steve. 

"While you're working," Steve said, "I'm going to come up with the final version of plan A, or at least the final version before we have to adapt it to whatever we encounter out there. After that, I'm going to see if Friday and I can work out whether or not we'll need a plan B." 

"When are you thinking we'll be ready to go?"

"Day after tomorrow," Steve said. "Does that give you enough time?"

"I could manage tomorrow. We shouldn't waste time."

"If we're good to go earlier, then so much the better." He gave Tony a smile that looked just as forced as Tony's own had been. "Two or three days, depending on how long the mission itself takes, and I'll be out of your hair for good."

"Best news I've heard all day," Tony said, and wondered if it sounded as hollow to Steve as it did to himself.

****

"You might as well have these," Tony said, setting the shield on the table with the latest version of Steve's suit on top of it. "They were just gathering dust in storage at the compound, anyway."

Or not, as it happened, but Steve didn't need to know that this was three versions later than the suit Tony had been making for him before Berlin. 

Tony had finished up with the work he'd needed to do a little before noon, and had spent the next hour tinkering with Steve's suit until he realized that he was just procrastinating on giving it to Steve. At that point, he'd finished what he was doing, gathered the stuff up, and come out here to find Steve. 

Steve needed the suit. There was no point making a big deal about it. 

"A new suit?" Steve held it up to look at it, a little suspiciously. 

"Nothing high-tech, I swear. At least, nothing you'll notice."

Steve's eyes narrowed. "What does that mean?" 

"It means you can't walk into a fabric store and buy this material," Tony said. "You can't buy it anywhere, actually. I've been using it for the kid's suits, and I modified it a little for you." It looked more like leather than Spider-Man's suits did, but it was just as flexible and breathable as those were. Just as strong, too, and no matter what it looked like, Peter's new suit was tough. It had to be, if the kid was going to go around getting buildings dropped on him. 

But Steve had stopped listening to him, because he'd seen what else Tony had put on the table. "Is that--"

"I fixed it," Tony said. "Made a couple of small improvements, but it's basically the same old shield." Technology had advanced far enough that he'd been able to improve on the shield slightly--the handle was better balanced--but there wasn't much he could do with a vibranium frisbee, so it was more or less the same shield Steve had been using since the forties. 

"Like I said," Tony went on quickly, because the way Steve was still looking at his shield made him afraid Steve was going to get emotional, "it's no big deal. They were taking up closet space, so when we moved everything out of the tower..." He shrugged. 

"You had them sent here?"

"No," he admitted. "They were stored at the compound. I had Happy send them when you were sleeping, night before last. But you needed something better than the shreds you showed up in, and if I was giving you the suit... it's not like anyone else is going to use this shield." 

"I heard rumors that the government was looking for the next Captain America."

"Yeah. I think that was one of Ross's genius ideas," Tony said. "They can find somebody--whether he has any kind of enhanced abilities, or is just good at taking punches--and drape him in the flag. They can call him whatever they want. He still doesn't get this shield. It's yours until you say you don't want it."

From the way Steve was running his hand over the metal, that wasn't going to happen today, if it ever did. 

"You should go try the suit on," Tony said. "And try it out, for that matter, just in case there's something I need to adjust before you use it in a real fight."

"The gym's kind of small," Steve said. 

"The living room's kind of big," Tony replied. "We'll move the furniture. Plus, it's not like we're going to go all out." 

"We?"

"You're not going to be able to get an idea of how the suit will work in a fight without a fight," Tony pointed out. "And there's plenty of room in here." Not only was the living room huge, but the ceiling was high; the second floor didn't extend over this part of the house, and while the living room ceiling wasn't quite level with that of the second-floor rooms, it was only a few feet lower. 

They'd have to be careful to avoid damaging anything, but he and Steve had sparred like this in the tower gym plenty of times, and the walls and ceilings had remained intact. There shouldn't be any problem. 

"I wouldn't have thought you'd want to, after--" 

Steve broke off, but Tony was still hit with a visceral memory: lying on the ground barely able to move, tasting blood in his mouth, being sure for a few minutes that he was going to die in Siberia. 

He swallowed hard, shoving those memories away angrily. "What's the matter, Cap? Afraid I'm going to try to get a little of my own back?"

"If you wanted revenge," Steve said, "all you had to do was tell Ross I was here. Or kill me while I slept, if you wanted something a little more permanent."

He hadn't even considered killing Steve. The only thing he'd been tempted to do while Steve slept had been to crawl into bed next to him. Tony thought he was happier letting Steve think he'd been contemplating murder. 

"Anyway, it's fine," Tony said. "I'm fine, this is fine, I want to see my work in action. Go. Get changed. I'll suit up and then we can rearrange the furniture."

"If you're sure," Steve said, but he didn't wait around for further convincing. Tony had to feel a little satisfied about how eager Steve was to try out the suit. It was always a good feeling when someone wanted to use something Tony had made for them. 

Less than half an hour later, they were both ready for action, and the living room furniture had been arranged around the sides of the room. 

Tony put his helmet on--he'd used the extra lifting power of the suit to help him move the heavy sectional sofa, but he hadn't needed his helmet for that--and then said, "On three? Friday, give us a count.:" 

In the old days, one or the other of them would have made a move before "three"--Tony because he took any advantage he could get, Steve claiming it was more realistic, since an enemy wouldn't wait for a count of three before attacking--but today they both waited for Friday to at least get to "Thr--" before launching their attacks. 

They were being careful, both of them: each trying to signal to the other that this was a friendly skirmish, not all-out battle. Nothing like the last time they'd faced one another like this.

That worked for forty-five minutes or so. Tony couldn't tell from Steve's usual "I'm busy fighting" determined expression, but personally, he was having a damn good time. He'd missed this kind of sparring, and he thought Steve had too. 

Until Tony miscalculated, and Steve slipped past his defenses, hurling Tony away from him. Tony's back slammed into the wall, and for a second, he was back in Siberia, filled with the painful certainty that there was no way he and Steve were both going to walk out of there alive. 

Just for a second, and then Steve was standing in front of him, just out of arm's reach, giving him a worried look. "Are you--" he began, and his stricken expression told Tony that he wasn't the only one who'd been hit with some unwanted memories. 

That was enough to let Tony get past it. "I'm fine," he snapped. "Worry about my wall, if you want to worry about something." He was glad he had the helmet; Steve couldn't see his face, so he wouldn't know that Tony had overreacted. 

"You said it'd be fine to spar in here."

"It is." Really, the wall was fine. This house had been built with the assumption that trouble would be showing up at some point. That particular wall had Tony's lab on the other side, so it was even more heavily reinforced than the rest of the house. "I was getting tired of this paint color anyway. I'll call my decorator, it'll be like nothing ever happened." 

He got back up to his feet, ignoring the hand that Steve held out. "So are we done here?"

Steve pulled off his cowl and went over to the couch, dropping onto it heavily. "Yeah, I think so," he said, his voice still a little tense. 

Tony got out of the armor (so much easier to do that these days than it had been at first, though if his current line of research panned out, this was going to look painfully clunky by this time next year) and went to the kitchen for more bottled water before sitting down next to Steve. 

Before forcing himself to sit next to Steve, because this wasn't Siberia and Tony knew that. Things were different again. Not like they were before, because there was no going back to that, but different. Better, even if they were a long way from good. He'd just forgotten that for a moment. 

"Thanks," Steve said, taking a bottle from him. Then, with a faint echo of the old shit-eating grin Tony remembered, he said, "Not that I worked up much of a sweat. I mean, do you really call that a challenge?"

"I call it a test of your new suit," Tony said. "If you want a challenge, we'll have to wait until we can go outside. I like this house. I want to keep it."

"I guess that's fair," Steve said. That slight smile was still there, both painfully familiar and painfully distant at the same time. Tony didn't want to be reminded of everything they'd lost. He wanted to be able to focus on now. Or tomorrow, or the day after. 

Even the good memories hurt, and he was tired of it. 

They both fell into silence. Tony mentally compiled a list of all the things he needed to ask Steve about the suit so that he could make whatever final adjustments Steve needed before they headed for Lichtenbad. 

He didn't know what Steve was doing, other than drinking his water and giving Tony odd speculative glances when he thought Tony wasn't looking. Good thing Tony had excellent peripheral vision, or he might not have noticed Steve was watching him like that. 

Before he got annoyed enough to ask Steve what he was doing, Steve said, "You really sold the tower?"

"Yeah," Tony said. "Stripped out everything special from the upper floors, obviously." No more room reinforced to handle the Hulk, none of their special security, nothing. It was back to being a fairly ordinary building. 

"Why? Don't you want a place to live in the city?"

"I have a place to live in Manhattan," Tony said. "And Stark Industries has multiple sites throughout the city, so I have places to work, too." Not to mention a small--by his standards--workshop in his apartment, and the labs at the compound. 

"I assumed you'd just change the name back to Stark Tower when the Avengers moved to the compound," Steve said. "It surprised me when you said you'd sold it instead."

Tony shrugged. "I thought about keeping it. After all, it wasn't just a normal building even before I remodeled it for the Avengers, and afterward--" He shook his head. "But in the end, it was something I needed to let go of."

He hoped Steve would think he was just talking about the building, and not the team, or the idea of the team. He'd remodeled the tower to make it a home for them--a home for his team, his friends, his family. He'd known most of them wouldn't live there full time; Steve had gone to DC after the Chitauri invasion to work for SHIELD, Clint and Natasha came and went as they pleased, Thor wasn't even on Earth half the time, Bruce liked being alone. 

But he'd wanted them all to have a place that was theirs. 

Only that had been a stupid dream. They weren't a family. They weren't friends. They'd only really been a team when they'd had no choice, and Tony didn't need the reminder that, with very few exceptions, the only people who'd ever wanted to be around him were being paid to be. 

He'd needed to let go of that, and selling the building was a good way to make the point. To himself, even if nobody else knew what he was doing. "And now I can put that entire part of my life behind me," he finished. 

"Just like that?"

"Not everyone is stuck in the past. I'm all about the future. About moving on." He couldn't stop himself from saying, "I mean, look at us. The good parts, the bad parts--all in the past now." 

"You really mean that." 

"Wouldn't have said it if I didn't." 

"So there's absolutely nothing between us now." 

"There's this mission," Tony said, while his stunted sense of self-preservation screamed _shut up, shut up, don't keep pushing him_, in the back of his mind. "Nothing else, though."

"Oh," Steve said, sounding so calm that Tony wanted to punch him. "So if I do this--"

While Tony was waiting to hear what "this" was, Steve leaned over and kissed him. 

If Steve had seemed at all doubtful, if he'd been cautious or hesitant, Tony might have been able to resist. But Steve kissed him like the last two years had never happened, like this was before Tony and Bruce had created Ultron, back when Tony had thought that maybe he and Steve were going to make things work between them. 

Steve kissed him hard, hungry and possessive, and Tony's answering kiss was just as demanding. By the time they finally pulled apart, Tony had squirmed around so that he was kneeling on the couch, his hands clutching at Steve's shoulders. 

"Absolutely nothing," Tony said, and kissed Steve again. What was the use of having terrible impulse control if you didn't give into the stupid impulses that got you something you wanted, as well as the ones that fucked your life up?

Steve pushed him--away, Tony thought at first, but no, Steve was just pushing him onto the couch, on his back. Then Steve's body was covering his, and Steve was kissing him again, and it would have required a credible threat to his life to make Tony stop kissing him back.

"You're sure this isn't still something?" Steve asked.

If Tony arched his back just like _that_, he could press himself against Steve's hip, too greedy for friction to care that Steve would know that the weight of Steve's body on him, after all this time, had left him suddenly, achingly, hard. 

"I'm sure," Tony said. "Nothing at all," and his hand snaked between them to find Steve's cock, as hard as his own, and press his palm against it, running his hand over its length, still covered by the suit he'd made for Steve. 

Steve never had to know how many times in the last year Tony had imagined this. Tony hadn't kept count, anyway. 

From his pocket, Tony's phone shrilled insistently; Tony pulled it out, silenced it without looking, and tossed it on the table. 

But that had broken the spell, and Steve pulled back, blinking at him. "Pepper," he said. 

"We're not together," Tony said, and maybe it was fair of Steve to ask; Tony had been on-again, off-again, with both of them, back then, because it wasn't like Tony could go very long without fucking things up with whichever of them he'd been with at the time. 

Maybe it was fair to ask, but Tony bristled anyway. 

But he wasn't annoyed enough to protest when Steve kissed him again; he just kissed back, digging his fingers into Steve's shoulders, holding on tight.

"Bedroom," he suggested in between kisses, not because he wanted to be able to remember Steve in his bed one last time, but because the bed would give him more room to maneuver. If Steve thought that Tony was just going to lie back and let Steve do whatever he wanted, Steve had another think coming. 

"You sure?"

Of course he wasn't sure. This was going to be a disaster. This was backsliding, this was an addict falling off the wagon, this was asking to get his heart broken all over again. 

But he wanted Steve too much for that to matter, and besides, he wasn't going to back down now. 

He'd never been good at resisting even an implied challenge from Steve, after all. 

"I mean," Tony said, "if you want to hump on the couch like a couple of kids, we can do that, but there's a bedroom upstairs that'd be a lot more comfortable." He smirked up at Steve. "If you're very good, I might even let you suck my dick for old times' sake." 

"Oh, is that so?" Steve moved off Tony, starting to get his boots off. "And what if I don't want to?"

"That's okay," Tony said, sitting up and just watching Steve. 

He could be doing something worthwhile: he could head upstairs, he could undress, he could say "fuck it" to the whole idea and go to his lab, because he still had things to do. Instead, he watched Steve, taking in the tiny lines just beginning to form at the corners of Steve's eyes; the faint dusting of freckles on his cheeks and the bridge of his nose; the way his hands were as sure and as strong-looking as ever. 

Stupid, really, to have halfway expected Steve's hands to be different now, just because he'd always loved Steve's hands. Just because so many of the other things he'd loved about Steve had changed with no warning. 

"That's okay," he repeated, before Steve could figure out where Tony's train of thought had taken him. "If you want to go the rest of your life never getting to do that one last time, it's going to be your loss, not mine."

There. He'd put it out there: this was the last time. This didn't change anything Tony had said before. It wasn't about forgiveness, or getting back together, or admitting that as much as they disagreed, as terrible as the things they'd done to one another were, they were better together. 

Steve had his boots off now, and he stood up, peeling off the suit as he did. Tony expected it to wind up in a heap on the floor, but instead, Steve draped it carefully over the back of the couch. "I should hang it up," he said, and Tony laughed. 

"It's not going to wrinkle, but you know what?" Tony went on. "Hang it up. Do whatever you want. I'm going upstairs to my bed, and I'm kind of hoping you'll show up at some point. But if I'm too much for you these days, I'll understand."

He made himself _not_ look over his shoulder as he climbed the stairs. He only made it about halfway before he heard Steve's footsteps, and before he reached the top, he could feel Steve's breath hot on the back of his neck. Steve must have been taking the stairs two at a time.

_An excellent choice, Captain Rogers._

Tony opened the door to his bedroom and led the way inside, but then hesitated. It had been a long time since they'd done this, and they'd lost the moment when they'd been interrupted. He turned around to look at Steve, trying to get his head back in the game. 

Steve smirked at him, an obvious imitation of the look Tony had given him a few minutes ago. "If you want to come in your pants like a teenager, I guess that's your decision, but if you were serious about what you wanted me to do, you're going to have to get some of those clothes off."

"You're assuming you've been very good, then?"

Steve shrugged. "I doubt it, but I also don't think that's going to discourage you from wanting my mouth on your cock."

Tony kicked off his shoes and began trying to get out of his jeans at the same time. Steve didn't undress further; he'd been wearing socks downstairs, but removing them must have been why he hadn't followed Tony to the stairs immediately. 

He just stood there, watching Tony, until Tony's pants were off. Then he advanced on Tony, putting his hands on Tony's shoulders and bearing him down onto the bed. 

Tony felt another brief moment of panic, but then older memories came back to him, from before Siberia, before Berlin, before Sokovia, and he let himself fall onto the bed, pulling Steve down with him. 

Steve wasted no time tugging down the elastic of Tony's underwear, freeing his cock. "You're sure this is what you want?" he said. "I mean, a guy your age, if this is over too soon, you won't be good for much else until tomorrow."

"Says the guy fifty years older than me," Tony said, grinning. This felt familiar, too; they'd always tended to goad one another like this, in the bedroom as well as out of it. He pushed himself up on his elbows so that he could kiss Steve one more time before Steve slid further down the bed, settling in between Tony's legs.

"Anyway," Tony went on, "if you do your job right, I won't mind even if this _is_ all I'm good for tonight."

"Selfish," Steve said, lowering his head so that Tony could feel hot breath on his cock. "What about me?"

"Your lack of imagination is depressing. If you don't know there are plenty of things I can do for you..." He shook his head in mock sadness. "I'm actually going to be hurt here, Rogers. Did you forget everything I taught you?"

"Was there something I was supposed to remember?" He was still laughing when he opened his mouth and--_God_\--swallowed Tony down. 

Tony's hands came to rest on the back of Steve's head, tangling in the dark-blond hair, longer now than Steve used to wear it. He'd always loved Steve's mouth on him. The rasp of Steve's beard on his skin was new, but it turned out that Tony liked it. 

He still didn't love the way it looked, even if it was a bit less shaggy than it had been when Steve first arrived, but maybe he could see a point to it now. 

He slid one hand a little further down to cup the back of Steve's neck, fingers tracing random patterns on the skin, digging in a little whenever Steve's tongue against his cock sent an extra jolt of arousal through him.

Steve didn't look up from what he was doing; that was something Tony remembered from before, too. Steve sucked cock with the same kind of single-minded focus that he used to destroy punching bags or take out Hydra agents. 

About as well, too, which meant Steve was really damn good.

"You can slow down a little," Tony said, the words punctuated by quiet gasps. 

Steve ignored him, though. Well, if Tony came in his mouth before Steve was ready for it, that was going to be his own problem to deal with. Maybe he was ready for it, though, since he wrapped his hand around the base of Tony's cock, stroking it in time with the strong, steady suction of his mouth. 

"Steve," Tony gasped, and he wasn't sure if it was meant as a warning or just a plea. 

If it was the former, Steve ignored it. If it was the latter, he gave Tony exactly what he wanted, continuing his attention to Tony's cock until his hips arched up off the bed as he came. 

But the time Tony caught his breath, Steve had moved back up on the bed, kissing Tony deeply so that he could taste himself in Steve's mouth. 

For a moment, Tony just kissed back, savoring the afterglow, but then he became aware of Steve's erection pressing into his hip, and realized that he needed to return the favor. It would never do for him to owe Steve, or for Steve to think that Tony had been overcome with emotion and distracted from the business at hand. 

He squirmed free of Steve's arms, then rolled onto his side and reached for Steve's cock. "Let me help you with this," he said as he began to stroke it. 

"I was kind of hoping for something else," Steve began, but Tony cut him off. 

"You can fuck me later," he promised, even though he knew there wouldn't be any "later" for them. Within forty-eight hours, they'd be on the way to Lichtenbad, and a day or two after that, assuming they both survived, they'd be going their separate ways for good this time. 

Steve knew that too; Tony had made himself perfectly clear. But maybe, for right now, they could both pretend. 

"I mean, you were good," Tony went on, "but you're going to have to impress me a little more if I'm going to let you fuck me." He kept his hand moving on Steve's cock, trying to remember just how Steve liked it, the twist of the wrist or touch of his fingers that left Steve gasping with pleasure. 

Tony leaned over to kiss him again, slowly and softly, and then said, "I don't have all day, Rogers," and sped up the movement of his hand. "If you want to come, you need to get on with it." He dragged his thumb over the head of Steve's cock, rubbing over the slit, just to hear the way it made Steve groan. 

"You'd be better at this if you weren't in so much of a hurry," Steve murmured, proving himself a liar--again--when he tensed up, then came in Tony's hand. 

"Complaining?" 

"I'm just saying it could be better," Steve said, pressing a few more lazy kisses to Tony's lips. 

"Well, if you didn't like it, we don't ever have to do it again."

Steve froze for a moment, but then slowly relaxed. "I didn't say I didn't like it," he said. "Now come here." 

He should get up. He should clean up and get dressed again and go down to his workshop. There were still things he needed to do before they could even think about leaving for Lichtenbad. 

But instead, he slid closer and let Steve's arms enclose him again. He could take a minute or two to lie here like this, with his head against Steve's shoulder. 

It might not have meant anything, but that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy it.

****


	4. Chapter 4

****

"Colonel Rhodes is downstairs, boss."

Tony didn't know how many times Friday had tried to get his attention, but it had clearly been more than once, given the volume and the tone she was using. He'd tell anyone else that Friday was an AI and therefore couldn't actually get annoyed, but he knew better. 

"Rhodey? Huh?" Tony sat up, or at least tried to. The muscular arm thrown across his chest was hampering him a little. "Let go," he hissed, shoving Steve's arm away. Steve moved over in the bed, but didn't really seem to wake up. 

Fine. It'd be better if Steve stayed up here, sound asleep, anyway. It'd be easier for Tony to get rid of Rhodey if he had no idea what was going on. 

"Tell Rhodey I'll be downstairs in five minutes," he said. "What time is it, anyway?"

"Nine-fourteen PM, Pacific Daylight Time."

Damn. He hadn't even planned to fall asleep, let alone take a lengthy nap. 

It had been better sleep than he'd had in a while, too, and he wasn't going to think about that. 

"Tell him ten minutes," he corrected himself; he needed to jump in the shower before he went down to face his surprise guest. "If Steve wakes up, tell him Rhodey's here and he should stay out of sight." 

Tony grabbed a quick shower, getting rid of the traces of what he and Steve had been doing, then threw on some clothes and headed down. It was more like fifteen or twenty minutes, but Rhodey wouldn't think anything of that. Ten minutes late, for Tony, was practically early; there was always something else drawing his attention away at the last minute. 

Rhodey had made himself at home; he was in the kitchen, wiping something up from the counter while a pot of coffee brewed. 

"This is a surprise," Tony said, as he walked into the kitchen area. 

"I see you've redecorated," Rhodey replied. "And you've been working on that suit for Cap, the one you said was going into storage."

Maybe keeping Steve out of sight wasn't going to be enough to hide this from Rhodey. Dammit, it would be the only person Friday would let in without question. "I felt like a change. I think having the furniture against the walls makes the whole space seem airier, don't you?"

Rhodey leaned back against the kitchen counter. "Yeah, it does," he agreed. "It leaves a lot more room for you to store all of this bullshit." 

"Bullshit?"

"So, you stopped answering your phone yesterday," Rhodey went on. "Right around the time that Secretary Ross contacted me at the compound to let me know Steve's back in the country. Then you keep on not answering me, even after I send you a text and leave a voicemail saying that if I don't hear back from you, I'm coming to pay you a visit." 

The coffee had finished brewing; Rhodey reached for a mug from the cupboard. "Want some?"

"I'll get it," Tony said. "You go sit down. You're the guest, after all, even if you weren't invited."

"I warned you," Rhodey said again, as he went to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. "I told you that if I didn't hear back, I was coming out here. I didn't want to spend today flying across the country, but given that Ross called me again today to say he's worried that Steve's coming after you, I figured I should check up on things before he does." He waved toward the rearranged living room, or maybe the uniform on the couch. "Looks like I was right about that, huh?"

Then his eyes narrowed, and he looked Tony over thoughtfully. "What took you so long to come downstairs?"

"What? Oh, I was sleeping." He poured two cups of coffee, carried them over to the table, and set them down before pulling out a chair for himself. 

"At nine PM? When was the last time you had a nine o'clock bedtime--1978?"

"I'd been awake for a long time," Tony said. "I finally crashed."

"When you crash like that, you fall over where you are," Rhodey argued. "I'd have found you drooling on your workbench or sacked out on the couch. But you were in bed. And when you got up, you showered and changed? You didn't just wander down in your underwear--if I'm lucky--to find out what I wanted? That's not like you."

"It could be like me," Tony said. "People change. They grow." 

"They have sex with their fugitive exes." 

"Steve's not my ex." Rhodey just looked at him, the silence growing steadily more uncomfortable, until he added, "I never told you Steve was my ex."

"You never had to, dumbass. I've known you most of my life. What do you think I am, a moron?" He shook his head. "Now, are you going to tell me what the hell is going on? Not to mention, what lies have you been telling Ross? We should probably be on the same page about that."

Tony took a deep breath. "You aren't going to Ross with this?" 

"I'm really not." He took a sip of his coffee and then sighed. "I've had a lot of time to think lately, and everything I've been hearing about the way the Accords have been implemented is... not good. I'm not going to hand over somebody who used to be a friend, not when Ross could throw him in prison for the rest of his life without a trial." 

"Okay," Tony said, because if he trusted anyone, it was Rhodey. He'd trust Rhodey before he'd trust himself, by a long way. "Steve's here." 

Rhodey did his best impression of the kid from _Home Alone._ "No shit, Tones. I never would have guessed!"

"He turned up a couple of nights ago. He was in pretty bad shape, and he said he needed my help."

"What about the rest of his team? Where are they?"

"Hydra has them." He looked down into his coffee so that he didn't have to look Rhodey in the eye for the next part. "They have Sam and Wanda, anyway. If Steve's right, Natasha's dead."

"Jesus Christ." Rhodey stood up, and part of Tony's brain couldn't help but study the way the braces worked, figuring out ways they could be improved. These were already better than the first set, the ones Rhodey had used when he first got out of the hospital, but they weren't good _enough_. It was his fault Rhodey needed them in the first place; he was at least going to do everything he could to make up for what he'd done.

"You still keep the Scotch in the same place?" Rhodey asked, starting across the room toward the bar. 

"Yeah. I don't think I have any of the really good stuff here yet, though."

"We don't need the good stuff," Rhodey said. "We just need the strong stuff." Rhodey produced a bottle of decent-enough Scotch, brought it back to the table, and poured a slug into each of their coffee cups. He took an experimental sip and added a little more Scotch to each cup, then sat down, leaving the bottle on the table between them. 

"Natasha's dead," he repeated. 

"Yeah. I can give you the Cliff Notes, but if you want details, you'll have to ask Steve for them later. They were undercover, they got found out, Natasha died, they captured the others, Steve barely got away. He was pretty badly hurt when he got here, too."

"Is he okay?"

"He's healing up all right," Tony said. "But Natasha's dead, Sam and Wanda are in the hands of Hydra, they're all wanted fugitives, and he has a lumberjack beard. I think it's safe to say that Steve is not even in the same zip code as okay."

Which was one of the reasons he was doing this. Because Steve wasn't okay, and he'd come to Tony for help, even knowing that Tony was likely to say no. 

How could he turn Steve away, even if this was stupid?

Rhodey took a big gulp of his spiked coffee, grimaced a little, and then said, "So what are we going to do about it? My armor's on the jet, just in case you did turn out to be in trouble."

"_We're_ not doing anything," Tony said. "You're not involved. Go back to the compound. Tell Ross I'm having a midlife crisis. I already told him I was in the hot tub with twins when he called; he'll believe you. I really should get around to having a hot tub put in," he added, then blinked to clear his thoughts before they gave him any more images of what he and Steve could do with a hot tub. 

"Sorry, that was my mind wandering off. Tell Ross I'm partying too hard to notice anything going on around me, and then forget you know anything about this, so that whatever happens, you don't get touched by it." 

"Is that what you're going to do?"

"No. I'm going to--Steve has a plan," Tony said. "I'm helping."

"You're helping," Rhodey said. "After the way things went down between the two of you."

"This isn't about him and me, " Tony insisted. "It's about doing the right thing. I've already told him this is the end of it. I don't want to see or hear from him again once we're rescued the others."

Rhodey shook his head. "Jesus. Listen to yourself. You drag yourself out of bed with the guy, come down and feed me a line of bullshit to protect him, you're risking your life and your freedom to help him, and you want me to believe this is the end?"

Tony gulped down some of his own coffee. It had cooled down a little too much, but he couldn't be completely sober for this conversation. It was either the coffee or drink the Scotch straight from the bottle, and he didn't want to see Rhodey's expression if he did that. 

"I don't care what you believe," he said. "I'm going to help Steve rescue the others, if we can. I'm going to try to find confirmation about Nat's death, if I can. And if we can retrieve her body and give her a decent burial at the compound, that seems like the least we can do." 

"Okay," Rhodey said, getting up and bringing over the pot of coffee, refilling their cups. "Not arguing with you there. It is the right thing to do, and I can't blame you for trying to do it. But do you think you might be being maybe just a little stupid where Steve's concerned?"

"Yeah," Tony said. "I do. But it's better than being a _lot_ stupid where he's concerned, so it's an improvement over the last time he and I were in the same room."

He didn't know what else to say. He knew Rhodey had thought Tony's anger toward Steve was a little excessive ("complete fucking overkill, and if you could get your head out of your ass, you'd agree with me," was the way Tony remembered that conversation), so he'd have figured Rhodey would approve of Tony and Steve getting along, even if it was just short term. 

Instead, he was... what? Advocating caution? Like Rhodey had said, they'd known one another since Tony was fifteen years old. He should know by now that Tony Stark didn't really do "cautious."

"I'm not going to argue that," Rhodey said. "It's a huge improvement. But seriously, I agree with the rescue plan, but do you have any idea what the hell you're doing? Not the rescue part. If you're letting Steve make the plans there, you're probably okay. I mean, you and Steve."

"We're working together." Tony shrugged. 

"You're lying to the Secretary of State about having seen him, _and_ you're sleeping with him. Neither of those is just 'working together.'" 

"Maybe, but it's a lot less than whatever you're thinking it is. Helping him--I'm doing that for Natasha, and because I really don't like Ross. Whatever else we're doing is just nostalgia. Like I said, I made it clear that after this, it's like the two of us never met." 

"Okay, fine, whatever you say," Rhodey said, pushing his chair back. "Let's get more coffee, and you can get me up to speed on this plan of Cap's. I mean, unless he'd be willing to explain it to me himself."

"I can get the coffee," Tony said quickly as he got up. 

Rhodey frowned at him. "You know I can walk, yeah? That's the whole point of these braces. I'm not going to hike the Appalachian Trail, but I wasn't going to do that anyway. And in the field, I'd be in my armor, and then it's like the accident never happened." 

"That wasn't about--" Rhodey just looked at him, and Tony subsided. "Okay, maybe it's a little bit about the accident."

"Which doesn't stop me from getting my own coffee, and which was still not your fault, so sit the hell down. If you really want to be useful, go upstairs and see if Captain Breakup-Sex is awake." 

If that was all he wanted to know, Tony could just ask Friday. But maybe he should talk to Steve in person, to make sure they were both clear about everything before Steve came down to talk to Rhodey. 

"If he's not, I'm going to wake him up," Tony said, "so go ahead and pour a third cup."

"I can't believe you're asking a helpless cripple to do extra work," Rhodey said. 

"Asshole."

"You're the one who's been treating me like I'm going to break for the past year," Rhodey said, and dodged the dishtowel Tony grabbed and flicked him with.

Halfway up the stairs, Tony paused. "Friday, _is_ Steve awake?"

"Captain Rogers has been awake for approximately fifteen minutes," she confirmed. "I informed him that you had a visitor and suggested that he remain in your suite for the time being." She sounded a little disapproving when she said, "He returned to the guest room." 

So it wasn't just him who could annoy Friday. 

"Of course he did," Tony muttered, because it wasn't like Steve was going to do the sensible thing. Sure, he'd probably just wanted to get dressed, rather than face a potentially-hostile visitor wearing only his underwear, but he could have just stayed put. 

If Steve could trust Tony not to hand him over to Ross, he could certainly trust Tony not to send Rhodey up to confront him. 

Or maybe not. Tony kept making the point that he was only lying to Ross because Ross was such an asshole. Rhodey wasn't an asshole, so maybe Steve didn't trust that Tony _wouldn't_ hand Steve over to Rhodey, as a representative of the U.S. military. 

Maybe Tony hadn't given Steve any reason to trust that, so maybe he had no right to be stung by that lack of faith. 

Maybe Tony had never been very good at feeling what a reasonable person would feel. 

He knocked at Steve's door. "Just me," he called. 

"It's unlocked."

Tony pushed the door open. Steve was sitting on the bed, fully dressed. 

"Didn't Friday tell you to stay in my room?"

"I wanted to be dressed when--if Rhodes came up here to take me into custody. I didn't risk the shower, in case the sound carried, but at least I have my pants on."

"Rhodey's not here to arrest you," Tony said. "He's here because I didn't answer my phone, and because Ross has been on his ass, too, just in case you turned up at the compound instead of here." 

Then, in the interest of honesty, he added, "He knows you're here."

"He saw my suit," Steve said. "I shouldn't have left it downstairs, but I was counting on Friday not to let anyone in."

"Yeah, well, Rhodey's on the list to be let in at any time unless I specifically tell her not to," he said. "He noticed more than the suit, because he's annoying like that. It's just our bad luck that he's the one who showed up. And by 'bad luck,' I mean that I really should have paid better attention to my messages, despite the numerous distractions presented by the current situation." 

Steve stood up, squaring his shoulders. "I guess I should go down and see him."

"Try looking a little less like you're going to face a firing squad," Tony suggested. "He's not turning you in. He wants to help."

"You told him?"

"Of course I did. We can trust Rhodey." 

"I thought you didn't want to involve him in this," Steve said. 

"I didn't. I don't. But he's here, and he wants to be involved, and I already got a lecture from him about being overprotective, so...he's involved." He led the way out into the hall, Steve following close behind. 

"I'll have to adapt the plan. Everything was based on there only being the two of us."

"Having an extra person isn't a bad thing." Some plans really demanded a very small team, but Tony couldn't see that having three, rather than two, of them would be a problem here. 

"No, it's going to give us much better odds. I just have to adjust things."

"This is why I never plan ahead," Tony said, on his way down the stairs. "That way, I never have to adjust anything. I just react to whatever the actual conditions turn out to be."

Rhodey had put the bottle of whiskey away and was filling up coffee mugs as they came through into the kitchen. "Which is a good way to fuck things up," he said to Tony. "Plans are not your enemy." 

He set a mug of coffee on the counter near Tony, then held another out to Steve. "Captain."

"Colonel Rhodes."

Rhodey snorted and shook his head. "We don't have to be like that," he said. "Sorry. Tony said your people are in trouble. I want to help."

Steve took the coffee and leaned back against the kitchen island. "I won't object. I just want to know where we stand." 

"You and me? We're good."

"Really?"

"As far as I'm concerned, anyway. This last year or so, I rethought a few things. I don't know that I agree with you a hundred percent, but our opinions are a lot closer than they used to be. And the stuff that happened between you and Tony is between you and him, not you and me. I'm not happy with you about some of it, but I'm not happy with him about some of it, either, and he and I are okay."

"Traitor," Tony muttered, but without any heat behind it. Even a few months ago, he'd have been angry if Rhodey had refused to take sides, but now? He could see that Steve hadn't been entirely in the wrong. And Rhodey might be his best friend, but that didn't mean he had to blindly agree with Tony no matter how terrible he thought Tony's decisions were. 

It wasn't like Rhodey had ever done that before, either, so it'd be really unfair of Tony to expect him to start now. 

"You want me to get in the middle of it?" Rhodey said. "Because you've heard my opinion, and you know I'm not just going to stand back and pretend you were right about everything."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Tony said. 

"If you're serious about wanting to help," Steve said, "I'm not too proud to admit that we need you. If Wanda and Sam are both injured or too weak to move under their own power, having a team of three means that someone can help each of them, and we still have somebody to provide cover."

"If Sam's still there by the time we get there," Tony reminded him. At Rhodey's quizzical expression, he explained, "It looks like Hydra's trying to cut a deal with Ross. A prisoner exchange."

"Ross isn't going to fall for that," Rhodey said. "He's an asshole, but he's not going to make shady deals with Hydra."

"Even if he thinks it'll lead to him arresting me?" Steve asked.

Rhodey hesitated, but then shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe? I know there's a lot of pressure on him from both Washington and the UN because you guys haven't exactly been in hiding. Some people think the Accords are starting to slowly fall apart, and bringing in the most famous violators might revive support for them." 

Tony took a drink of his coffee. It was too weak, but Rhodey always made it that way. "I'll leave the global politics to the politicians," he said. "The biggest problem with the Accords is all the extra little sub-clauses they slipped in, and bringing in Steve and his team won't fix that. And the countries that have already withdrawn are all places where you've taken out Hydra cells or something equally nasty. They're feeling very pro-Captain America right now." 

"I've got to admit," Rhodey said, "if you put someone in a room with both Steve and Secretary Ross, they're probably not going to come out of there on Ross's side, so he might be making a bad call. Assuming he's actually considering this."

Steve shrugged. "It's too much to ask for people to make decisions according to their principles and not who they like better, I know."

"That's actually what I meant," Rhodey said. "If they listen to you explain why you wouldn't sign, why you keep acting independently, they're going to agree with you. You're pretty convincing about your principles." 

"Not that I've noticed," Steve said, looking directly at Tony. 

Tony forced himself not to react. "_Anyway_," he said loudly, "I think I mentioned leaving politics to the politicians? Our problem is that we have two people being held in Lichtenbad, and we need to get them out. Let's focus on that. Then you two can talk politics all you want, I don't care, as long as you leave me out of the conversation."

"He's right," Steve said. "We need to get you up to speed on what we've planned so far, and then start revising the plan to incorporate you. Everything else is irrelevant."

"Finally, something we can all agree on," Tony said. "Friday, pull up the footage from that factory."

"Get comfortable," he added to Rhodey. "This is going to be a long night."

****

It wasn't as long of a night as Tony had anticipated, because Rhodey was still on East Coast time and didn't make it much past two AM before he headed upstairs to get some sleep. Good thing Tony had built the house with plenty of space for guests, even if by the time it was completed, he hadn't been able to think of many people he'd want to have stay there.

"You should sleep too," Tony said to Steve. "I don't know if you're fully recovered or not--"

"I'm fine," Steve said flatly, which Tony was willing to guess was a giant "NO."

"Okay, you're fine," he said, "but how long have you been running on fumes? Since Berlin? Maybe even before that, since you had that whole search-for-Bucky thing going on, on top of everything else you were doing. If you have the chance to sleep, take it."

"What about you? Don't you need sleep?"

"That's what coffee's for," Tony said, brandishing his cup in the air. "Anyway, I'd planned to spend a lot more time working today than I managed to fit in, so if we want to be ready for tomorrow, I need to get some more work done."

"We're not going to be ready tomorrow," Steve said. "We'll go back to the original schedule. Day after tomorrow. Rhodey and I need to finish up our new plans."

"Still," Tony said. "Work to do. Who's to say you guys won't come up with six more things you need from me?" 

Also, if he went upstairs at the same time as Steve, they were going to have to address the question of which bed Steve was going to be sleeping in. 

Tony didn't know the answer. He had no idea what Steve wanted, and to be honest, he wasn't all that sure what he wanted, either. A lot of him said that if he could have another night sleeping next to Steve, he should take it. 

Then again, a lot of him said he'd already made too many stupid decisions about Steve lately, even if he didn't count anything directly involved with this rescue mission. Sleeping next to Steve wasn't going to do anything to put Steve in the past where he belonged. It wasn't going to do anything good, period. 

"I'll sleep in a while," Tony said when Steve looked ready to argue. "I just need to finish up a couple of things. Maybe another two hours?"

"I'll try not to take all the blankets before you get up there," Steve said, so maybe only one of them had a question about where Steve would be sleeping. 

Or maybe, Tony realized when he saw the uncertainty in Steve's eyes as he waited for Tony's response, they both had the same question, but one of them had decided to push the issue. 

Some things never changed. 

"Or you could sleep in the perfectly good bed in your own room," he said, feeling an ugly, petty pleasure when Steve winced. 

"I could," he agreed quietly. 

"You know, if you're sure you can't share the blankets." Tony made himself smile at Steve, like he'd just been teasing, because apparently that mean and petty part of him couldn't survive very long when face to face with Steve's disappointment. He couldn't quite bring himself to apologize, but maybe this would do.

"I think I can share."

"If you can't, I'll just punch you in the side until you wake up and let me have my blanket." Then, before he made any more stupid decisions, he turned away from Steve and headed for the lab. 

Two hours had been a generous estimate. He really only needed an hour or so to get everything ready, and some of that was because there was only so fast that his hands could move. It wasn't even four o'clock before Tony was shutting things down for the night. 

He thought, for a minute, about crashing on the couch in the corner of the lab, the one he'd had put in for nights when he worked this late. 

And then he thought about the look in Steve's eyes when Tony had suggested that Steve should sleep in the guest room, and went upstairs. 

This didn't change anything. By this time next week, he and Steve would still have seen one another for the last time. They were going to be done. Completely finished. 

But that was next week. 

Tonight, Steve was asleep in Tony's bed, and Tony was taking advantage of that. 

He'd spent over a year wondering what he would have done differently, the last time--any of the last times--with Steve, if he'd _known_ they'd be the last.

The last mission they'd go on together. 

The last time Steve would come to the lab to watch him work. 

The last meal they'd share. 

The last touch. The last kiss. The last time he'd hear Steve say his name. 

And now he _could_ know. He'd know exactly when each of those moments would happen. This was their chance to not waste them, to make them right. 

He'd be stupid not to take that chance. Tony was many things, but he definitely wasn't stupid. 

Steve was sound asleep when Tony got to his room, but when he slipped into bed, Steve stirred enough to make room for him in the bed, wrapping an arm around his chest to pull him close. 

This was never going to happen again, Tony reminded himself. Maybe tomorrow night, depending on how the preparations for their mission went, but after that, he'd never have another chance. 

He clenched his hands into fists so that he didn't give in to the temptation to just cling to Steve, because "clinging and needy" wasn't how he wanted Steve to think about him after this was over. 

Assuming, of course, that Steve ever did.

****

"I really don't think Rogers is going to come anywhere near the compound or Tony Stark," Rhodey said into his phone, holding up his hand for silence as Tony came downstairs. "I know the Secretary was concerned about that, but I think he's much too intelligent to make that decision. He's been careful enough to avoid capture for over a year, he's not going to just walk into the home of someone who has a duty to bring him in."

Tony went over to the kitchen and started to make himself a ham sandwich. The lack of dirty dishes in the sink made him suspect that Rhodey and Steve hadn't eaten yet that morning, either, and he got out a few more slices of bread. Being able to keep eavesdropping on Rhodey's conversation had nothing to do with his decision, of course; it was all about being a good host. 

"When do you expect him back in the office? ... Of course I understand that you can't give me the Secretary's itinerary. I'm not really asking for--yes, of course, thank you." He put his phone back in his pocket. 

"Ross left two voice mails last night," Rhodey said. "Or early this morning for him, I guess. You probably have some, too."

"Maybe. Friday has access to my incoming calls, and I already told her to ignore any from Ross. If I keep talking to him, I'm going to slip up eventually." He spread mustard on half the bread, mayonnaise on the other half because Steve both had terrible taste in condiments and could out-eat him and Rhodey combined.

"All the more reason for me to have tried to return his call, though. But even though it was important enough for him to call me twice, he's not available now, and his office doesn't know when he will be available." 

Tony frowned. "Think he's headed out of the country? Say, on a super-secret prisoner exchange mission?"

"Have any Hydra agents been removed from custody lately?"

"That email implied that whoever it was they wanted--they never did name names, but I'm guessing Ross knew who it was--was in the Raft. Once you're in there, you don't exist to the outside world. I could break into their system and look at their internal records, but even I can't do that without setting off a lot of alarms, at least not quickly."

"Then let's assume," Rhodey said, "and if it makes an ass out of you and me, it won't be the first time. We need to move quickly."

Tony had to agree. "Friday, monitor the CCTV footage at the factory. If the cameras are shut off, tell me immediately. Get my attention no matter what I'm doing. Same thing if you see anyone show up other than a single person at the usual times for food delivery. If more people leave the factory than entered it, same priority. Any other movement, alert me, but with normal priority."

He turned to Rhodey, shrugging. "It won't do any practical good, but at least we'll have some idea of whether or not they're taking Sam anywhere. Since Lichtenbad didn't sign the Accords, Hydra probably wouldn't set up the meeting for there. They'll have to come get him."

"Okay. I mean, better if we're in the air, if not already in place, when that happens, but we're not ready to go yet, so it'll have to do." He took a sandwich from the plate.

"Careful, some have mayo."

"Ugh, Cap." He checked his sandwich. "Speaking of Steve, where is he? We should get to work." He set the sandwich back on the plate and chose another one. This one must have been mayonnaise-free, because he took a bite. 

"Why are you asking me about Steve?"

Rhodey set the sandwich down again, then buried his face in his hands. "Jesus, Tony, is this the time for you to be acting like this?"

Tony shrugged. He swallowed his own bite of food, then said, "I think so, yeah."

"Fine, I'll spell it out," Rhodey said. "I will bet you any sum of money you care to name that you and Steve slept in the same bed last night. Therefore, you probably saw him this morning. Therefore, of the two of us, you're more likely to know where he is."

"I'm not taking that bet," Tony said, "but not because you'd win, just because it's stupid. But if I had to guess, I'd say that Steve went to the gym this morning and was in the shower when I came down." 

"If you had to guess," Rhodey repeated.

"Look, leave me my plausible deniability."

"Make it plausible, and I might. Seriously, are you two trying to work things out, or not? Because what you're saying and everything you've done since I got here say very different things, and the clock is ticking on your chance to figure your shit out."

Tony gave that the serious consideration it deserved. In other words, he got up and went over to the refrigerator. "Soda? Since you didn't make coffee this morning. Some best friend you are."

"Pretty sure you know how to make coffee," Rhodey said, "but yeah, thanks. And fine, we don't have to talk about it. It's not like we don't have a dozen more important things to worry about right now. I'm just concerned that whatever this is with Steve has you not thinking straight again, and I don't want Wanda and Sam to suffer because of it."

Rhodey might not have said "I don't want to suffer again because of it"; he might not have even thought it, but Tony still filled in the blanks. "I'm thinking straight. The single most important thing is getting them away from Hydra. That's the only thing that I care about right now."

"And after that?"

"After that, like I told you, we're done. I'll go my way, Steve and his team will go theirs."

"So what's this?"

"For one thing, it's your big chance, honey-bear. This would be the perfect time to make your move."

"Jesus Christ," Rhodey muttered, rolling his eyes. "I know you far too well to ever make a move on you."

"Maybe I meant on Steve."

"Come on, be serious. What are you doing?"

Tony shrugged. "Saying goodbye? I don't know. A week ago, I knew how I felt about Steve. A lot less angry than I was a year ago, but still not at all positive. And now... It's not like I forget about what's happened. I obviously can't do that. But it just doesn't seem to matter as much as it did."

"Yeah," Rhodey said, "because you missed him. You care about him, asshole. And yeah, there's a lot of shit for you two to work through, but maybe you should think about making an attempt to do that."

"He's still a wanted criminal," Tony pointed out. "There's not much future for us no matter what." And he wasn't actually giving this any real consideration. 

"That could change. Also, you could meet up from time to time. You can afford to travel. It's not like you were around each other twenty-four/seven before, right?"

True. Steve had had the STRIKE team in DC for a while, and then unspecified "missions" that were probably trying to locate Barnes. Tony'd had his work and his own missions as Iron Man, not to mention business trips, conferences, speaking engagements, and so on. Even during the times they'd been a couple, they hadn't exactly lived in one another's pockets.

It had worked. Sort of. Except when it hadn't. Then again, things had frequently not worked that well with Pepper, too. He had to consider the possibility that the common factor there was that he was crap at relationships. 

He could get better at them. He was already a lot better than he'd been a decade ago. He could--

What was he even thinking? "Let's just worry about getting our people out of there." He paused. "I mean, Steve's people."

"They're still our people."

"They made it pretty obvious that they don't think of themselves that way," he grumbled, but since Rhodey pretended he hadn't heard, Tony dropped the subject. 

Anyway, Rhodey was right. In some ways, at least, Sam and Wanda were still Avengers. He'd been thinking of them that way this whole time--Avengers gone rogue, maybe, but still connected in some way. 

So maybe bickering over terminology wasn't exactly the best use of their time. "Friday, tell Steve to get his ass down here," he said. "There's food, and we need to get started." 

A few seconds later, she reported, "He's on his way," just as Steve appeared at the top of the stairs. 

"Yeah, we got that, thanks," Tony said, forcing himself not to smile up at Steve. He needed to stop listening to Rhodey.

Even if he and Steve were on better terms than they'd been when Steve arrived, the fact remained that Steve was a fugitive, and Tony was risking the same fate if he was caught helping Steve, or if he was found to have known where Steve was and not turned him in. 

They might get away with it this time, but not if he and Steve kept meeting up, no matter how careful they were. 

This didn't have a future, even if he wasn't as opposed to the very idea as he'd been a few days ago, and he needed to remember that. 

Steve met Tony's eyes just then and broke into a smile, so maybe Tony wasn't the only one who needed a reminder. 

"Hey, Cap," Rhodey said. "Everything still good to go?"

"As far as I know. I had Friday show me the surveillance cameras, and everything still seems quiet." 

"Well, Ross is currently incommunicado," Tony said, "so we're concerned that it's going to get noisy soon. What's the earliest we can get moving?"

Steve and Rhodey exchanged glances. "We'd planned on tomorrow morning," Steve said, "but it's going to depend on how close to ready you are with our tech."

"An hour?" Tony said. "And that's all packing it up. Genius works quickly."

Rhodey nearly choked on his sandwich. "Except when everything's going wrong, in which case it's 'you can't hurry genius, Rhodey.'"

"That seems really familiar," Steve said. "I think I've heard that a few dozen times, at least." 

"You lie." Tony shoved the plate of sandwiches toward Steve. "I've never called you Rhodey." 

Rhodey smacked him on the shoulder. "Stop being a jackass."

"Never."

"Stop being a jackass temporarily, because we have work to do?"

Tony pretended to be thinking about it. "Okay, that's a little more reasonable." 

Steve had taken a sandwich and eaten half of it while Tony and Rhodey talked, but now he said, "So all the tech is good to go. I think we're all clear on what we need to be doing, right?" 

"Right," Rhodey said, "and we have the plans to that factory, so we know where we're going."

"So..." Steve paused, considering. "Really, everything we'd be doing from this point on is just gathering more intel. With the three of us, I think we can handle it now."

"Okay. So Tony's coming back to New York with me. We need to make sure that's well-known." Rhodey looked at Tony. "I'm worried about you. You're making bad choices. You're not handling your breakup with Pepper well."

"I'm not," Tony agreed. "You're right to worry. I might be making all kinds of terrible decisions. Falling into bed with dangerous people."

Okay, this thing where Steve and Rhodey were exchanging exasperated glances whenever he said something really needed to stop. 

"We stick Steve in a bad suit and a ball cap and pretend he's a flunky," Tony went on. "Nobody's going to recognize you," he reassured Steve, "especially because they're not going to be expecting to see you."

"And nobody will be expecting the quinjet to land at an airport, since you're heading for the compound," Steve finished. "So when we divert to Lichtenbad, we'll have some time before anyone realizes that's what happened." 

"Right," Tony said. "I'm going to pack up the tech, and Rhodey, I need you to go shopping. You know the kind of thing we need for Steve, yeah? Think Happy's wardrobe, but cheaper. He's not the head of security, he's just a goon."

"And I'll help you pack the tech," Steve said. 

"No, you're going to do something about that beard," Tony said firmly. "There's no way I'd hire someone who looked like you do now. Then you can help me."

"I'm not getting rid of this," Steve said, rubbing his chin protectively. "Besides, you--"

"Nobody's making you get rid of it," Tony cut in before Steve could say something Rhodey would never let Tony forget. Besides, he didn't want Steve to get rid of it. Not until Tony was completely sure there'd be no chance for one more bout of ill-advised "goodbye forever" sex.

"Just trim it," Rhodey explained. "Tony does have a point. It's not the right kind of facial hair for the guy you're pretending to be."

"Right," Steve said. "I guess that makes sense."

"If you're attached to the lumberjack look, you can grow it back," Tony said. "But you might have been seen with it, so trimming it has another advantage. Remember, you want to look like a big, not-that-bright guy who wears dark suits and ball caps and goes around making sure that nobody kills rich assholes who aren't currently supposed to use their armor to defend themselves without government permission, and if you ask me why I signed the Accords in the first place if I don't like that, I will personally see that you choke on your shield." 

Steve held his hands up in front of him. "I didn't say a word," he said, but he was laughing. They'd found enough common ground that he could make a joke about the Accords, that Steve could laugh about them. Tony was a little boggled by that, but it definitely wasn't _bad_. 

"Okay, then," Rhodey said. "It's going to take me more than an hour to get what we need, since I have to drive into town. Can I borrow a car?"

"You know where the keys are."

"Will two hours be enough?" Steve asked. 

"Make it three," Rhodey said, "and I'll call Tony if that's not going to work."

Tony checked the time. It was about ten now. By mid-afternoon, they'd be on their way, and this weird little interlude in his life would be over.

By this time tomorrow, the mission would probably be over, for better or for worse. If things went their way, they'd have Sam and Wanda in the quinjet and be en route to somewhere safe, if they hadn't arrived there already. 

Forty-eight hours from now, he'd have seen Steve for the last time. 

He seemed to remember that he was supposed to be happy about that.

****

"So where's this factory?" Rhodey said, turning his head to scan the landscape.

"About a kilometer east of here," Steve said. "We couldn't come any closer without risking alerting Hydra. It's getting close to the time they usually bring food in, so we wanted to be careful."

It wasn't that close to eight in the morning; if Tony had done the time-zone conversion right, it wasn't even seven yet. But Steve was right, they were cutting it closer than they'd planned to. Rhodey had gotten stuck behind a wreck on the freeway, not to mention that he'd had trouble finding a suit jacket that would fit Steve's shoulders without needing alterations. 

"Caution," Tony said, "is overrated. Come on, Rhodey. We'll go ahead to scout things out, and Cap can follow on foot." 

The two of them headed east. The old soda bottling plant that Hydra appeared to be using as a prison was on the outskirts of Krugersdorf, which wasn't all that much of a town. According to the background information Friday had dug up for them, the plant had been the single big employer in the town, and it showed.

The fact that every other building they flew over seemed to be either abandoned, close to falling down, or both, was lucky for them, but suggested that the loss of the factory had been a bad thing for Krugersdorf. 

Then again, Hydra moving in wasn't a good thing for Krugersdorf either. Not having any occupied buildings nearby made Tony feel better about the possibility things might get nasty if they encountered much of a Hydra presence. 

They were expecting to encounter a hell of a lot of Hydra presence. 

Forty-five minutes later, Tony was thinking they had completely underestimated how much "a hell of a lot" was.

It had all looked so easy back in California. They'd expected a couple of guards in the factory, but Tony was betting they'd converted part of it into high-tech cells to hold their prisoners rather than relying on sheer numbers to keep them in line. 

Sam wouldn't have had his suit undercover; one of the things Steve had asked Tony for was a recreation of the most recent version of it. Steve planned to conceal it somewhere near the factory and get it to Sam as soon as he was free. 

All Hydra would have had to do was to search Sam carefully for any tech he might have smuggled in, get rid of that, and lock him up. Sam was smart and resourceful, but if he'd been strip-searched and thrown into a bare cell, there wouldn't be a lot he could do to get out unless his guards made a mistake. 

As for Wanda, her magic made her a lot more dangerous, but Hydra had a lot of experience with her abilities. They'd know how to dampen them and keep her under control. (It was always possible, of course, that they didn't know how or didn't have the necessary resources to do it, but in that case, Wanda had either escaped--which didn't seem likely from the security cameras--or she was, at best, seriously hurt.)

That was going to be Tony's part in the plan, once they were inside: he'd been supposed to get to wherever they were holding Wanda and, if possible, deactivate whatever they were using to keep her powers in check. Steve was going to find Sam and get him out, with Rhodey's help if he needed firepower to get the cell open, and Rhodey would be providing cover. 

At least, that had been the plan until they'd been midway across the Atlantic, when Friday had informed Tony that all hell had broken loose. 

She hadn't put it that way, of course. 

She'd just told them that there had been an incident in Slorenia involving Thaddeus Ross and a handful of functionaries from the United Nations, specifically the panel overseeing the Sokovia Accords. 

Apparently--who could have guessed?--the Hydra offer of a prisoner exchange had been bullshit. Ross and his flunkies had shown up with the Hydra agent they were meant to be trading, and Sarkissian had shown up with a lot of heavily armed Hydra operatives. And not Sam, or at least, there'd been no mention of him in the media reports. 

And the reports weren't holding a lot back, because "Secretary of State makes a deal with Hydra, after his predecessor was revealed to be part of Hydra," was really not a good look. They'd named Hydra specifically, though they'd hedged it with "allegedly" and "reportedly" and "according to sources," and they'd been quick to blame the United Nations in general and Ross in particular for the casualties. 

One of whom had been Thaddeus Ross. 

At least that meant everyone had bigger problems than looking for Captain America, or wondering why Iron Man and War Machine were in Lichtenbad. 

But some of the Hydra agents had been taken into custody alive--not many; they'd mostly gone for the spy-movie cliché of cyanide capsules--and that had apparently meant that every agent in Lichtenbad had descended upon the factory, just in case their fellow evil assholes broke under interrogation and gave up their plans before Sam and Wanda could be moved somewhere safer. 

And that meant Tony had spent so much time stunning Hydra goons that his power reserves had dropped down to fifteen percent, and he'd had to resort to punching while his suit recharged. 

Rhodey was on patrol outside, trying to keep any other Hydra goons out, as well as keeping local law enforcement at a safe distance. Not that they'd taken an interest so far. Tony couldn't blame them. It'd be better to let the three of them handle things, and then let the local authorities come in for the clean-up. 

He and Steve were supposed to be looking for the others. The factory was large and had multiple levels: the main factory floor, but also storage, office space, and all the other stuff needed to keep a plant that size running. A few areas had been converted to Hydra's use; there was even a lab that looked like it'd been used recently. Tony wanted a chance to get in there before the authorities did, to see what they'd been working on so that he'd have a chance to counter it, but he didn't think that was going to happen. 

Most of the factory was just abandoned, with whatever equipment hadn't been sold left in place. Before Hydra had taken it over, local kids had apparently been breaking in to use it as a party spot; there were still beer bottles, cigarette butts, and the occasional used condom in some corners, where nobody had seen the need to clean it up. 

"I found something," Steve's voice said in his ear. "I could use some help, though. There's an electronic lock on this wing, and you're going to be better at getting through it than I can." 

Natasha would have been even better, Tony thought. Electronics might be one of his areas of expertise, but getting through locked doors was one of hers. 

Had been one of hers. 

Tony could do it, though. It'd just take a little longer. "On my way," he said. "Rhodey, any trouble outside?" 

"Not any more," came the reply. 

"Keep an eye out. Cap thinks he might have found them, and it's possible I'm going to set off some alarms on the way."

Steve was on the next floor up, but Tony only had to punch one Hydra creep in the face on the way. They must have found most of them already. None of them were getting up any time soon, either; he'd done a _lot_ of punching, for one thing, and he'd dragged most of the unconscious bodies into empty rooms and then melted the locks on the doors. They could still break the doors down once they woke up, but hopefully Tony and the others would be long gone by then. 

"Through here," Steve called, waving at a solid metal door that didn't look like it was part of the original architecture. "I haven't seen any other door like it." 

"Promising," Tony said. "Friday, what are you getting from this?"

In reply, he got a schematic of the electronic locks. "I don't know how to pick this without wasting a lot of time," he told Steve, "but I can disable it. There might be alarms going off, but Hydra have their hands full, we've knocked out at least twenty of their local people, and I really doubt their alarm system is set to alert the cops." 

"Not unless the police have been infiltrated."

"You know, with an attitude like that, I really can't understand why I bother with you," Tony said absently, studying the diagram on his HUD. 

"I thought you didn't."

He decided to ignore that. "If I cut this wire, it looks like it should... no, there's a backup. This one _.and_ that one, and we'll cut power to the lock. But will it open?" After another few seconds' study, he sighed. "It will not."

"It won't open without power?"

"Nope, it's set to remain locked if there's a power cut. Sensible, but frustrating."

"So what next?"

"I blast it open," Tony said. "It's the fastest way, and I want to get out of here before nap time is over. I'll try to be careful, in case there's someone on the other side, but I can't guarantee anything. Friday, what's my power situation now?"

"Recharged to sixty-one percent."

"And how much do I need to get back to the jet at full speed? Assume I'm carrying another hundred and seventy-five pounds or so." He was hoping Sam would be able to make it back on his own, but running the worst case scenario wasn't a bad plan. 

"Nine percent."

Great. That gave him over fifty percent of his power capacity to work with. He'd probably have to blast Sam and Wanda's doors open, too, but it wasn't going to take anything like half his power capacity to get this door open. 

"Stand back," he warned Steve, and focused his repulsor beams on the door. 

It didn't take long before there was a smoking hole big enough for them to get through. If either of the others was weakened enough to need to be carried out, they'd have to hand them through the hole since it didn't go all the way down to the floor, but that was a problem for future Tony to deal with. 

This wing was definitely what they'd been looking for. Nameplates on the wall next to each door made it obvious that these rooms had once been offices, but the doors had been replaced with heavy steel and massive electronic locks, definitely not the kind of thing you'd put on an office in a soft drink factory. 

If any alarms had gone off, they'd been silent ones. Tony wasn't ruling that out. Regardless, they'd already made enough noise that a little more wasn't going to hurt. "Call for them," Tony said. "They'll trust you." Whereas if they heard Tony's voice, if they even recognized it, they were likely to assume he was here to take them into custody. 

The doors had a small slot in them near the floor, presumably meant for passing food through, and Steve went to each one in turn, lifting the flap and calling, "Sam? Wanda?"

"Over here," a voice called, after Steve had checked the third cell. It was coming from a door two down from where Steve was; he practically ran to it. 

"Sam? Is that you? Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "I mean, I've had better vacations, but I'm all right." 

"Stand back from the door," Tony called. "We're going to get you out of there."

Sam was silent for a few seconds. "Steve, who is that? It sounds like--"

Oh, no, they didn't have time for this now. "It sounds like the guy who's about to break through your cell door, so back up." He didn't have to blast an exit hole in this door; it was nowhere near as high-tech as the one in the hall, just solid and heavy. All he had to do was cut around the lock, then pull the door open. 

He hung back as Steve pulled the door open, figuring that the joyful reunion didn't have a lot of room for him. 

Steve caught Sam in a powerful one-armed hug; Tony's ribs ached in sympathy. "You sure you're okay?"

"Well, not now, you're cracking my spine, man." Sam gave him a weak smile. 

He didn't look too bad. Thinner than Tony remembered, but Hydra hadn't had him long enough for that to be all their doing. No obvious broken bones, no signs of severe bruising; there were a few cuts on his face, but they looked to be healing. Those were probably from when he was captured. 

Clearly, they'd had the prisoner exchange in mind from the time they realized who he was, and had expected Ross to demand visual proof that they had Sam alive and at least mostly well before he agreed to the deal. Or maybe some of them had thought it was going to be a legitimate exchange. It wasn't like Hydra hired their goons for their brainpower. 

Once Steve let Sam go, Sam looked over at Tony and frowned. "Thanks for getting me out," he said. "I guess being a permanent guest of Uncle Sam is better than being here. The food will have a lot less cabbage in it, anyway."

"It's not like that, Sam," Steve said. "Tony's here to help. Nobody's getting arrested."

"Well, we all might," Tony said, "since we're trespassing and we just beat up a hell of a lot of people. But I'm not here to arrest anybody. Steve came to me for help. I'm helping. If anyone asks, I never saw you, I was never here."

Steve nodded, and Sam relaxed a little. "Yeah. Okay. Thanks. I mean, I'm serious, as bad as the Raft was, it was better than this. But you understand why I was a little suspicious."

"I don't blame you. I wouldn't blame if you were still suspicious. Honestly, though, even if I wanted to turn you in, I wouldn't know who to call. Ross just got himself killed trying to make a deal with Hydra."

"What the fuck?" Sam shook his head. "Never mind, explain later, let's get out of here now.:" 

"Do you know where they have Wanda?"

"One of the cells across the hall," he said. "At least, she was. We talked, at first. We'd wedge open the slots in the doors so we could hear each other better. But she's been really quiet for the last few days. They're still bringing food, so she's alive, but..."

"But let's get her out of there," Steve said firmly. 

"I don't know where they have Natasha," Sam went on. 

Steve's shoulders stiffened; Tony couldn't help but put his hand on Steve's shoulder. "Natasha didn't make it," Steve said, and Tony watched Sam's posture sag.

"I'm going to get Wanda's door open," Tony said. "You two take a minute if you need it." 

Tony took a little longer on the door than he needed to so that Sam had a minute to collect himself. Once he was done, he hesitated before opening it. "If she's hurt," he said, "one of you two should be the first person she sees, not me."

"All right," Steve said, surreptitiously wiping his eyes with the back of his hand and going to the door. 

Wanda's cell was the mirror image of Sam's, with the same bare-bones furnishing: a bunk bolted to the wall, a chemical toilet in one corner, and nothing else but a few crumpled food wrappers and two full bottles of water on a tray. 

Wanda was curled on the bunk, her arms wrapped around her knees. As the door swung open, her head jerked up, her hands reaching out like she was about to call up her magic. 

The air around her fingertips glowed faintly red for a fraction of a second, but it fizzled out immediately. 

"Easy, Wanda," Steve said, his voice soft. "It's Steve and Sam. We're here to get you out."

"Steve?" It seemed to take her a few seconds to focus on him. "My God, I was afraid you were dead."

"I was afraid of that a time or two myself," Steve admitted, "but no, I'm here."

"Natasha," she said. "I watched them take her down, Steve, she's dead."

"I know," he said, still gently. "I saw her."

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice breaking. "This is my fault. I should have realized they'd do something to neutralize magic at the meeting, and if they hadn't recognized me..."

"It's not your fault," Steve said. "It's no one's fault but Hydra's. Right now, we need to get you out of here before the guards start waking up. Can you walk?"

"Maybe. They're drugging me. It's in my water, so I couldn't avoid it. Maybe my food, too, I can't be sure. It's how they're stopping me from using my magic. There's a spell on the door, too, but that just protects it from my magic. The drugs knock my powers out altogether." She let Steve help her to her feet; Tony saw her flinch when he touched her, but she recovered herself quickly. 

Not so quickly that Steve didn't notice. "Are you hurt?"

"Only a little." That was an obvious lie, though none of them called her on it. They'd all lied like that before themselves. 

Once Wanda was on her feet, she let herself lean heavily on Steve. "They've been trying to persuade me to rejoin them. When asking nicely didn't work..." She lifted one shoulder in an attempt at a shrug. "It's nothing that won't heal. The drugs are worse. They dull my magic, but they also leave me dizzy and weak. And... the best description I can come up with is that my entire body feels like when you sit with your leg tucked under you and it goes to sleep." 

"I was worried," Sam said from the hall. "You stopped answering when I tried to talk to you."

"I wasn't quite unconscious, but I was in a daze most of the time," she said. "Between their persuasion tactics and the drugs..." The one-shouldered shrug again. They were going to have to check out her right shoulder once they got to safety. 

"You'll feel better once the drugs wear off," Steve said firmly. "Right now, we're going to get you somewhere safe."

Short-term, "somewhere safe" meant an old SHIELD safe house Steve knew of in Madrid. According to Steve, Natasha had taken them to it several months ago when they needed to rest up after a mission, and to the best of his knowledge, no one had recognized them. 

Tony had had Friday confirm that the building was still there and didn't seem to be in use by anyone else. All they had to do was to get out of here and get to the jet. 

Hopefully, Ross's stupidity would have left both Hydra and the UN in enough chaos that they could get to Spain without anyone noticing. They wouldn't be on the security cameras here; Friday was splicing in some older footage from the day before yesterday, when the weather was similar to today's. 

Unless someone already had reason to suspect the feed had been tampered with, they'd be unlikely to notice anything unusual about it. And while they'd landed the jet in a field, it was one that was lying fallow, the farmhouse a quarter-mile or so away a tumble-down wreck with boards on the windows. 

They just might be able to get out of here. 

But long-term? Tony had no idea where "somewhere safe" would be for Steve's people. He had no idea if there even could be anywhere safe for them. Hunting them down hadn't been a very high priority for anyone on the committee but Ross--Tony suspected that was at least in part because they were doing such a good job at ferreting out the remaining dregs of Hydra's organization--but that wasn't the same as not being wanted criminals. 

A week ago, he'd have said that was what Steve deserved, and if the others were stupid enough to follow Steve's lead, they deserved it, too. 

Today, obviously, things had changed, and not just because Tony hoped they did find a secure location for Sam and Wanda to recover, and that they managed to get away cleanly. 

Today, he wanted to fix things. 

That could be a dangerous urge. Wanting to fix things had led to Ultron. Wanting to fix things had led to signing the Accords in the first place. 

Tony didn't fix things, at least, not things that couldn't be repaired with a screwdriver and a soldering iron. He broke them, and when he tried to fix them, something else had to break in its place. 

But he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to resist trying, one more time, to fix things for Steve. 

To fix things _with_ Steve, no matter what else it might break. 

For a smart guy, he could be a slow learner sometimes. 

Sam wasn't up to running a marathon, but he could walk under his own power, and was steady enough on his legs that once Steve got Wanda out to the hallway, he could hand her over to Sam. 

"What's he doing here?" she asked once she caught sight of Tony. 

"Helping," Sam said. "I'm as confused as you are, but Steve trusts him, so..."

"He's better than Hydra," she agreed. "That much, I can take on trust." Then she looked up at Steve. "Is Vision with you?"

"He's out of contact," Tony answered. "The UN sent him somewhere hush-hush. Radio silence from the minute he left the compound. Friday's sending messages regularly, but no telling when he'll get them."

"Tony will make sure Vision knows you're safe," Steve reassured her, "and you can contact him as soon as we know it's not going to put us in more danger."

"That's fair." To Tony, she explained, "We've been out of contact since I went undercover, so I want to make sure he knows I'm okay."

"I get it," Tony said, "I mean, officially I know nothing about the fact that you and Vision have kept in touch, because that would be something I'd have to report to the authorities, but if I did know, I'd understand why you'd want to talk to him." 

Tony hadn't actually known it, to be honest. He'd suspected it, but he'd never done anything to try to confirm those suspicions. There wasn't any obligation to report suspicions to anyone, after all. 

He'd decided a while back that the less he had to actually lie about, the better. 

"Let's get moving," he said, then activated the comms. "Hey, Rhodey, what's the situation out there?"

"We're good," Rhodey said. "Nobody else seems to be on the way."

"We're coming out," Tony said. "I want us to get away before any of these guys wake up."

"Do you have them?"

"Yeah, they're okay. There's nothing wrong with Wilson that a good night's sleep and a steak dinner wouldn't cure. Wanda might need medical attention, but she's on her feet."

"Thank God."

"I told you not to call me that in public."

Tony could practically hear Rhodey rolling his eyes. All he said, though, was, "You need any help?"

"I don't think so. If we do, you know the signal."

"Screaming 'Rhodey, we're in deep shit' over the comms?"

"Good, you do remember. We're heading out now. Back entrance. If you don't see us in three--" He looked at Wanda, still leaning heavily on Sam. "Let's make it five minutes. Come in after us if we're not out."

"You got it," Rhodey said, and Tony broke the connection. 

"We're clear," he told Steve. "Let's take advantage of that. I'll take point."

They headed out with Steve bringing up the rear. They both had to help get Wanda through the cut-out section of the door; the hole was far enough up that she couldn't climb through even with Sam's help, so Steve lifted her up and handed her to Tony. She felt ridiculously light; she'd obviously been trying to eat and drink as little as possible while Hydra had her, but again, it hadn't been long enough for that to be the only explanation. This last year had been hard on all of Steve's people.

But when he set her down again, she kept herself steady on her feet through what was probably sheer willpower, and then, while she let Sam help her again once he was through, she started walking a little faster. 

"Don't wear yourself out," Steve said. "We have a walk ahead of us."

Tony shook his head without turning back. "Either Rhodey or I will give her a lift," he said. "There's nothing to worry about."

"Oh, now you've jinxed us," Sam muttered, which had crossed Tony's mind, too, just a little too late. 

But it seemed like Sam was wrong, because aside from one guy in Hydra uniform who'd woken up just in time to get punched again, they didn't see anyone at all until Tony opened the back door of the factory, and then all they saw was Rhodey waiting for them.

****


	5. Chapter 5

****

Getting away wasn't quite as easy as that. Tony had flown Wanda back to the jet; his armor was a little faster than Rhodey's, and they'd agreed that getting her somewhere safe as quickly as possible was a good idea.

Steve, Rhodey, and Sam had gone to get Sam's new suit from where they'd cached it on the way in; Tony figured at least one of the others would come in on foot alongside Steve. Probably Rhodey; they'd probably have agreed that Sam should get to the jet where he could rest a little. 

"Boss, there's a helicopter coming," Friday reported; Tony hadn't even finished getting Wanda settled with a bottle of undrugged water and an apple. There was no way the others were even close to the jet by now. 

"Insignia? Anything official?"

"Unmarked." 

"Shit." They could have talked their way out of trouble with the police, maybe even the Lichtenbad military, but this was probably Hydra. They weren't stupid enough to paint their little octopus logo on the side of their choppers. 

After a few more questions to Friday, he hit the comms. "Rhodey, Steve, we've got trouble. Helicopter coming in from the east. Unmarked, so probably Hydra. We have five minutes, tops, before we have company. Is Sam suited up yet?" 

"Yeah," Sam said over his own comm. "What do you need from me?"

"I need you to get your feathered ass back here ASAP," Tony said. "You're not up to a fight, if it comes down to that, and you know where this safe house is. Worst comes to worst, you can get Wanda to safety."

"I'm not going to head out and just leave you guys behind," Sam said. 

"Yes, you are," Steve said. "The rest of us haven't spent over a week as Hydra's house guests. We're in better shape to take on a fight than you are, if it comes to that."

"It's not going to come to that," Tony said. "You two head back to the jet, too. Rhodey, if you catch sight of that chopper, take it out." 

"Let it get as low as possible before you do," Steve said. "We can't be certain it's Hydra--"

"Who else do you think it's going to be?" Sam demanded. Tony found himself grinning. It was good to know that there were other people willing to argue with Steve.

"We can be ninety-nine percent sure," Steve said, "but we don't know. So unless they attack, let them get as low as you dare, to give them a better chance of surviving a crash. We're not murderers. None of us are." 

That again. Tony suspected that last line was directed at him, and still didn't know if he agreed. 

"You're the boss," Rhodey said. "Sam's on his way, Tony. Steve and I will be right behind."

"You should go ahead," Steve said. "I'll go alone on foot. This suit has a stealth mode," he added, "which is completely ridiculous, but I might as well use it." 

"You keep going into fights wearing primary colors," Tony said, "and some of us would prefer it if you didn't get yourself killed."

"You promised no fancy gadgets," Steve said, "and then Friday tells me how to activate stealth mode."

"That's not a gadget," Tony argued. "It's a defense. Anyway, it's not a full stealth mode. You'll be visible if people look right at you. It just changes the way that light--"

Steve interrupted him. "You can explain it to me in as much detail as you want, later. Right now, I need to get moving."

"Nah," Rhodey said. "I'm giving you a lift. The sooner we're back at the jet, the better." 

The next thing Tony heard over his comm was Steve _squawking_. 

"Is he carrying you?" Tony asked, grinning. "You're carrying him, aren't you. You just swept Captain America off his feet."

"Jealous?" Rhodey said. 

"Just get back here. I'll do all the preflight, so we'll be ready to take off as soon as you're onboard."

Wanda was looking a little more alert; he wasn't sure if it was the adrenaline or getting water and food inside her. Once they were in the air, they'd need to check out her shoulder, maybe get her some painkillers, but she'd be okay for now. "What's going on?"

"They're on their way," he said. "Rhodey's going to take out the chopper for us." Or Tony would do it himself, if he needed to. Between the two of them, they could take care of a single helicopter. 

They were actually going to get out of here. 

Which meant Tony was going to have to think about what the hell he was going to do next. 

Not try to fix things. He didn't want them to get any worse than they already were. 

But maybe there was something in between leaving things irreparably broken, and trying desperately to force them to be "fixed" and damning the consequences.

He was going to have to figure out what that would even look like. The first step was probably going to look like talking to Steve, so there was a good chance it'd crash and burn before they got anywhere near step two, but he could worry about that later. 

Right now, there was a helicopter full of Hydra less than two minutes out, and that was something a lot easier to deal with. 

"I've got to go," he told Wanda. "The helicopter's still out there, so I'm going to go see if Rhodey needs help. You want some more water, or--" 

"Just go," she said. "I'll be fine." 

Tony suited up and left the plane. The first thing he saw wasn't the Hydra helicopter, although he could hear it in the distance; it was Sam, flying in at full speed. "Get in the plane," he said, shouting over the noise of the approaching chopper. "Keep Wanda company. We'll be ready to go in a few minutes."

"I don't need to be protected,:" Sam said. 

"Yeah, but Wanda might, so get your ass in the jet." 

He flew off before Sam could argue. "Cap, Rhodey, where are you?"

There was no response; Tony was about to try again when he heard the unmistakable sounds of an explosion, followed by a crash. "Rhodey? Steve! Where the fuck are you?"

He turned toward the east to see, at a distance, the smoking wreck of the helicopter in the middle of a field. "Goddamn it, answer me!" he yelled into the comms, his heart in his throat. 

"See that blown-up helicopter?" Rhodey's voice sounded in his ear, calm enough that Tony was going to have to kill him. "We're not far from that. We're fine," he added. 

"Did anybody get out?"

"Two men," Steve said. "They were flying pretty low and jumped before the helicopter blew. I think they both got away, so we'd better get moving. We'll be there in--how long, Rhodey?"

"Two minutes."

"Make it one," Tony said. 

"Two and a half minutes it is," Rhodey said, sounding too damn cheerful for the heart attack he'd nearly given Tony. 

Tony waited outside the plane, just in case the two men who'd escaped from the helicopter had more on their mind than just getting away from the wreckage.

But the only people he saw approaching the jet were Rhodey and Steve, and while tracking down two escaped probably-Hydra agents seemed like the kind of thing he was in favor of doing, in general, right now he wanted to get the others to safety, and to see whether or not he and Rhodey could make it back to the US without anyone realizing they'd ever been gone.

Rhodey came in for a landing and set Steve down. 

"Thanks for the lift."

Rhodey opened his faceplate. "I'd say 'any time,' but you're way too heavy."

"Are we ready to go?" Steve asked. 

"We can take off as soon as everyone's on board," Tony said, "so get a move on." He let Rhodey and Steve board first, taking a moment to scan the surroundings for any more potential trouble. 

Nothing. Hydra probably hadn't had more than that one chopper full of agents--however many there had been beyond the two who got away--to spare at this point, given the disaster in Slorenia and the two dozen or so goons in the factory. 

Tony joined the others on the jet. 

The flight to Spain was pleasantly uneventful; Steve got Wanda and Sam to eat and drink a little more, then checked out Wanda's arm. He'd pronounced it bruised and maybe sprained, but not broken; a sling and some meds, and she looked a lot more comfortable. Now both she and Sam had dozed off.

"I'm just going to get out of your way," Rhodey said, once they were well away from Krugersdorf. 

"You're not in the way," Tony said. "Autopilot's handling everything, so there's nothing I need to do."

Completely unsubtly, Rhodey jerked his head toward Steve. "I'm just going to get out of your way," he repeated. 

Tony groaned. "Oh, for God's sake. I just want to sit here, have a drink, and not have to fight anybody for the next hour, at least. That's the sum total of my plans, so give it a rest."

But when Tony did settle down after getting his drink, he took the open seat nearest to Steve. 

Steve looked up at him, giving Tony a faint smile. Tony smiled back, but didn't say anything. In the first place, he didn't quite know what he wanted to say; in the second, whatever it was, this wasn't the right time to say it. 

Or the right place, either, because the last thing Tony wanted was for Rhodey to think that his meddling was in any way helpful.

****

The safe house was an old warehouse that somebody had gotten partway through doing a loft conversion before the last time the economy tanked. The conversion hadn't progressed that far, but one apartment had been mostly finished, and there was electricity and plumbing.

When SHIELD had bought the building, they'd filled the bottom floor with stacks of crates on pallets to make it look like the building was still being used as a warehouse. The next floor up was mainly empty, but SHIELD had furnished the top-floor apartment. The windows were boarded up, but when Steve got the door open--the key codes for the locks downstairs and here both still worked, to their relief--he flipped the light switch. Track lighting might be dated, but at least they could see. 

"Who's paying the bills if SHIELD isn't anymore?" Tony asked, and Steve shrugged a little. 

"SHIELD probably still is," Sam said. "Nat says--Nat _said_," he corrected himself with a grimace, "that SHIELD runs the funds for places like this through so many dummy corporations that the bills would probably be paid for years without anyone noticing." He shrugged. "She also said it was a big assumption that SHIELD isn't still paying the bills."

Steve and Wanda didn't seem surprised by that. To be honest, Tony wasn't all that surprised by that himself. He hadn't devoted a lot of thought to it, but if Hydra was still kicking around, there was no reason SHIELD couldn't be. Sure, technically they'd been a government organization, but one, it wasn't like the government didn't run covert operations, and two, he wouldn't put it past Nick Fury to have put plans in motion so that SHIELD would exist even without government funding. 

The five of them went further into the apartment; Sam helped Wanda over to the couch, and then sat down next to her. Steve walked around the apartment, checking the boarded-up windows and looking for any signs that this place had been used recently. 

Tony put his glasses on and had Friday scan for bugs. The place was clean except for one SHIELD-issue listening device that Friday could disable remotely. 

"They're going to need supplies," Tony said to Rhodey once that was dealt with. "I'd go, but I'm kind of recognizable. The others are still wanted criminals. That leaves you.":

Rhodey nodded. The two of them had left their armor behind in the jet; it attracted attention, and it wasn't like they were staying here very long. They probably shouldn't have even come to the safe house, but Tony had needed to make sure that it was actually safe. 

Deactivating the bug had proved that was a good idea, but also, now Rhodey would be able to go out and buy groceries before they left.

"Sure," Rhodey said. "You're the one who made sure he had euros in his wallet, though, so hand them over. Since we didn't exactly show our passports at the border, I'd rather not have my credit card show up as being used here." 

Tony gave Rhodey some cash. Lichtenbad wasn't part of the EU, but Tony had been gambling that if he needed money, someone would be willing to accept euros anyway. He'd give whatever money was left to Steve before he and Rhodey went back to the States. After a day or two, it would be safe enough for Sam or Wanda, who weren't as recognizable as Steve, to go out for brief periods, even if Wanda's magic hadn't recovered enough for her to disguise her appearance. 

They couldn't stay here forever, but they'd be okay for a short time, until they figured out what to do next. 

Tony realized he'd been including himself in the "them" who would be working out a plan. He wasn't sure if the others would want his help. Steve might, but Sam and Wanda were less certain. To be honest, he wasn't sure how much help he'd be, other than providing them with funds. 

But Steve was in trouble, and he wanted to help, and that had started to seem perfectly normal and reasonable again. He hadn't forgotten the last year of his life, but at the moment, it didn't seem to matter that much. Steve needed him, and he was going to be there. 

He'd failed at that lately, but he wasn't going to let Steve down again. 

(Which was ridiculous. Even if a miracle happened and they managed to make things work between them, he'd let Steve down a hundred more times, at least, in a hundred different ways. But that was different. That was just the normal way that people fucked up in their relationships.)

Steve came back out from his examination of the bedroom just as Rhodey left. "Wanda, why don't you get some rest?" he said. "We're safe enough here, and we all need some sleep before we figure out our next move."

"I am tired," she admitted. "Perhaps I'll feel stronger after I rest."

"I'm guessing the drug won't wear off for at least twenty-four hours from your last dose," Tony said. "They were feeding you twice a day, but they had to assume you'd figure out what they were doing and drink as little of the water as you could, so they'd want something that didn't wear off quickly. When was your last dose?" He sat down on the edge of the coffee table; might as well make himself at home. 

"Last night," she said. "I drank about half a bottle of water. Two hundred fifty milliliters or so."

"So by late tonight or tomorrow morning, you should be feeling a little better. Maybe not back to normal, but hopefully you'll start getting the use of your powers back."

"Just now," she said, "I'd settle for the room not spinning when I stand up." She got up carefully and made her way to the bedroom, pausing once, her hand on a table. Tony assumed she'd had a dizzy spell and hoped those would wear off soon. 

"I'm guessing it's been longer since my last shower than yours," Sam said to Steve, "so I call dibs on the hot water." 

"Go ahead. Leave the bathroom door unlocked; when Rhodey comes back, I'll put your things in there so you can change." Rhodey had offered to pick up some new clothes for Sam and Wanda as well as food and other basic necessities. 

"I hope there's soap in there," Sam said. "I know we stocked up after we left, but who knows who's used this place since us?" Then he paused. "You know what, I don't even care. I can always shower again later." He disappeared through the second door. 

Steve sat down on the couch, stretching his legs out in front of him.

"You know," Tony said, "this furniture is beat-up enough that you could put your feet on it and nobody would care." 

"If I take up the whole couch, where are you going to sit?"

"I'm sitting right now. Not to mention that there's an armchair." And if he didn't want to sit on the battered, stained upholstery, there were four metal folding chairs around a card table near the kitchenette, and he could pull one over. 

"Tony," Steve said wearily, "don't play dumb."

"I'm not playing dumb," he said. "It's been a long day, and here you are, wondering where I'm going to sit instead of just asking me to come sit with you. Maybe you should try being a little more direct." 

Steve didn't sound any less weary when he said, "Come and sit next to me?" but he smiled when Tony immediately got up from the coffee table and joined him on the couch. 

Then Steve stretched his arm out along the back of the couch, and Tony laughed. 

"What's so funny?"

"You. Doing the teenage-boy-at-the-movies routine. 'Oh, I wasn't trying to put my arm around you, honest, I just need to stretch.'"

Steve chuckled. "But I am trying to put my arm around you. I'm just not sure you want me to. Sam and Wanda are safe. Doesn't that mean that we're done? That's what you said."

"Rhodey isn't back yet," Tony explained, "so we can't leave. The mission isn't over." He slid a little closer to Steve, nudging him with his shoulder until Steve let his arm slip down from the couch to drape around Tony's shoulders. 

"Also," he continued, "I'm starting to think I may have been a little harsh."

"A _little_?"

"Yeah. A little."

"None of our problems have magically gone away," Steve said. "There's still been a lot between us that's going to be hard to get past."

"I didn't say our problems were gone. All I said was that I might have been a little harsh--maybe overreacted a little--when I said I didn't ever want to see or speak to you again."

Steve gave him another slight smile. "I'm glad. If you'd meant it, I'd have left you alone, but I'm glad you didn't."

"Oh, I meant it. At the time, at least, I meant every word I said. I meant every word in Siberia, too, and in Berlin. I just disagree with myself _now_. And even then, I didn't mean--no, I have no idea how I thought things would turn out. But this isn't what I wanted, ever." 

He could feel the muscles in Steve's arm tense, and he quickly rushed on. "Okay, terrible wording. This year, that's what I didn't want. This, now? If I didn't want this, I'd be waiting for Rhodey at the jet. Or at least still sitting on the table. Or we'd have dropped you off and gone straight back to the States."

"Tony?"

"Yeah?" 

"Stop talking." But he was smiling again, and he tugged at Tony, just a little, so that when Tony gave in to the gentle pull, he found himself leaning against Steve's side. 

"Make me," Tony said. 

Just as he'd been hoping for, Steve kissed him. 

"Rhodey will be back soon," Tony said. "And Sam's going to come out of the shower eventually."

"Sam won't leave the bathroom until the hot water runs out," Steve said, using kisses as punctuation. "I know him. Showers whenever he wants one, that's the thing he complains about missing. And if I remember right from the last time we were here, it takes a long time to run out of hot water." 

"Rhodey," Tony repeated.

"Tell me he hasn't seen you do a lot more than a little necking on the couch."

"Necking? For God's sake, Steve, pretend you live in the twenty-first century." But he kissed Steve again all the same, over and over again as he raised up onto his knees on the couch, then straddled Steve's lap. 

"Tell me Rhodey hasn't seen you doing a lot more than making out with someone on the couch, then," Steve said, grinning against Tony's mouth. He put his arms around Tony, sliding his hands down his back until they were cupping his ass. 

"Rhodey has definitely walked in on me doing a lot more than making out with someone on the couch," Tony agreed. "That doesn't mean he wants to do it again."

"Does that mean you want to stop now?"

"It means that Rhodey is going to have to learn to live with disappointment," he corrected Steve, because right this minute, it would take a lot more than scandalizing Rhodey--as if he'd really be anything more than just amused and a little exasperated--to get him to want to stop this. 

He'd have to stop eventually. He was going to have to go home and leave Steve here. 

But not just yet.

****

In the end, they decided that since it was already mid-afternoon by the time Rhodey returned from his expedition, threatening to make Tony put him on the payroll as a personal shopper, they might as well stay the night.

Tony had suggested it, and he'd looked Rhodey straight in the eye without blinking when he said he thought it would be safer to wait until morning to take off. 

Rhodey had pretended to believe him. 

It wasn't like he and Steve were going to do anything. The bedroom was furnished with two sets of bunk beds, so Rhodey, Sam, and Wanda all had somewhere to sleep, but still, they were in the next room, likely to wander through if they needed the bathroom or something to eat or drink.

He and Steve should talk. Tony knew that. He just didn't want to, not yet. They'd done so much talking over the past few days, and right now, he just wanted to sit here on this lumpy monstrosity of a couch and savor the feeling of being in the same room as Steve without either of them being angry. 

So they'd sat there, and they'd talked about unimportant things--things they remembered, things they'd done in the time since they'd seen one another--and an hour or two before dawn, they'd dozed off. 

And an hour or so after dawn, with Rhodey waiting for him, Tony had slipped out of Steve's arms without waking him up. 

Something clenched tight in Tony's chest when he realized that after his first nap on Tony's couch, Steve had switched from what Tony thought of as his "high alert" sleep mode, when a gnat sneezing in the next room would wake him up, to the other one, the one Tony had once described as, "like a goddamn rock, Rogers, what the fuck, I could hit you on the head with a baseball bat and you'd just snore louder."

Even when he was exhausted, Steve only let himself do that if he felt safe. 

_Steve, you idiot, you shouldn't have felt safe around me. I sure as hell didn't think you were safe around me when you showed up on my doorstep._

He could have woken Steve--he probably could have done it even without using any of his most dependable strategies, all of which would have caused Rhodey to demand brain bleach immediately--but instead, he dug a receipt out of one of the shopping bags Rhodey had brought back, located a pen in the kitchen, and scrawled a note. 

_Taking off. I will be back.  Don't go hooking up with some hot Spanish guy unless you're planning to share him. --TS_

"I don't want to talk about this," he warned Rhodey as they made their way back to the quinjet. 

"About which part? You spending the night snuggling with the guy you've been claiming you hate? Leaving a note, which makes me think maybe you two aren't as completely, totally, done forever as you've been swearing you are? How cute you looked drooling on Cap's shoulder? Just let me know which part of that isn't okay to talk about, so I can drop the subject." 

"I don't even know why we brought you," Tony said. "You're a pain in my ass."

"Because I'm incredibly useful as well as being a damn fine piece of eye candy."

"Could be. Or because you would have given me the sad puppy eyes if I tried to leave you behind."

Not even the sad puppy eyes made Tony want to talk about Steve on the flight back to the compound. He didn't much want to talk about anything at all, so he had Friday show him the news. It hadn't been long enough for the covert deal the Secretary of State had been making with Hydra to have dropped out of the news cycle, but there was no mention of Steve, Rhodey, or Tony himself, which was a relief. 

A footnote to the story involved an anonymous source tipping off the Lichtenbad government and the UN about a Hydra operation in Krugersdorf and Lichtenstadt. 

Anonymous, of course, to everyone who wasn't either on the jet or in the Madrid safe house. Tony had had Friday make the call once they'd been reasonably confident they hadn't been spotted. 

"You know you're going to have to talk to the UN about this," Rhodey said.

"What for? As far as they know, I've been at the compound, drowning my sorrows with you. With Ross out of the picture, I'm not even sure they'll think I'm involved. Cap and I did part ways pretty dramatically, after all."

"Because they're not stupid?"

"Yeah, neither am I," Tony said. "And they're not going to suspect me. I was the Accords' biggest supporter, remember?"

"I remember," Rhodey said. "And now?"

"And now I've just violated them all to hell, Rhodey, what do you think my opinion is?"

"I don't know," Rhodey said. "You might have just made an exception. Love makes a guy do some stupid shit."

"Nobody's talking about love but you," Tony pointed out. "But I'm at least waiting to see who replaces Ross before I do anything that's likely to end up with us locked up for the rest of our lives, yeah?"

"I can get behind that. We did the right thing, but that doesn't mean that I want to spend the rest of my life staring at a reinforced concrete wall."

"So we're agreed: we've been at the compound, there's no reason to think we've been anywhere else, and we have no idea what's been happening because I was too busy getting drunk and crying about Pepper, and you were too busy keeping me from doing something stupid"

Rhodey laughed. "At least it's a lie that nobody's going to have any trouble believing."

****

Tony punched the code into the keypad by the front door of the warehouse. He took the stairs two at a time, then put in the code for the apartment door. "It's me," he yelled, wishing they'd thought to get Steve and the others a phone. He had one for each of them now, but that didn't do him a whole lot of good. "Nobody jump me."

He waited a few seconds, then opened the door. Steve and Sam were sitting at the card table, playing cards in their hands. "Hey kids, great news."

Sam looked up and then threw his hand of cards down on the table. "Well, that's my cue to clear out for a couple of hours," he said. 

"You don't want to hear the great news?" 

"Vision arrived this morning," Steve said, setting down his own cards and smiling up at Tony. "He told us there's been a shake-up at the UN."

"Dammit," Tony said. "I can't believe Vision stole my thunder."

He should have expected it, though. Vision had come back to the compound from his top-secret mission, but he'd left again within five minutes of hearing about what had happened to Wanda in his absence. 

Of course he'd have caught up on the news, and of course he'd want to tell Wanda that the UN had decided, in light of recent events and the suspicion that had (unfairly, but he should have had more sense than he did) attached to Ross after his death, the Sokovia Accords were being temporarily suspended while the committee revisited some of the provisions. From what Rhodey had heard from the DoD, there were concerns that some of the clauses had been written to make it easier for Hydra to operate unchecked.

One of the things that was being changed immediately was that people accused of violating the Accords couldn't be held without trial--and apparently, the panel had realized that prosecuting _Captain America_ for fighting evil without a license would be a terrible idea, because the acting Secretary of State had informed Tony that, "if you or any of your associates are in contact with Captain Rogers or his team, you can inform them that there are no longer any orders for their capture."

Translated, Tony was pretty sure that meant she knew he could contact Steve somehow, but was going to pretend to believe the bullshit he'd spun for Ross. 

He liked her better than he liked Ross, but he was still going to stick to his bullshit until he was sure that telling the truth wouldn't land him in hot water deep enough that he wouldn't be able to get himself out of it. 

But as soon as he'd had it officially confirmed that Steve and his people were no longer fugitives, Tony hadn't wasted any time heading for Spain. 

He considered that he'd done a damn fine job of self-restraint by not heading to Spain days ago. It had been over a week since he'd left Steve behind at the safe house, and while he was pretty sure he'd have known if something happened, not knowing if Steve was all right was an unpleasant experience.

He'd gotten used to it over the past year, but having Steve with him for a few days, not to mention seeing what kind of trouble Steve could get himself into his own, meant it was harder to ignore that kind of worry than it had been a few months ago. 

Of course, not telling himself several times a day that he hated Steve and didn't give a damn what happened to him might have had something to do with that, too. Eventually, even he started to believe his bullshit. 

Even he? How about _only_ he, since Rhodey hadn't. Yesterday, he'd given Tony a speech about how the opposite of love wasn't hate, it was indifference, and Tony hadn't ever managed, even once the first heat of anger had faded, to be indifferent toward Steve. 

He wasn't going to tell Rhodey how right he was, because Rhodey's ego didn't need that kind of encouragement. 

He was right, though. The only person who'd really believed Tony had been himself.

Sam was putting his jacket on; he'd clearly been serious about leaving. "You don't have to go," Tony told him. "I didn't come here here to kick you out."

"He has to go," Steve said, grinning at Sam. "I already told him. Vision and Wanda are gone for the night, too."

"I'm not staying out all night," Sam said, "but there's a movie theater near here that shows English-language movies with Spanish subtitles, so I can be gone for a few hours without hating you too much."

"And I want to talk to you without an audience," Steve said to Tony. He'd gotten up from the card table and now took a seat on the couch. 

"Just talk?" He gave Steve a mock pout. 

"Well, I did have other plans, but then you yelled that nobody was supposed to jump you."

Sam shook his head. "Yeah, I really don't want to be here."

"See a double feature," Tony called after him as the door closed behind him. 

Steve sighed, running a hand through his hair. Now that Tony had had time to get used to the way Steve was wearing it now, he liked it this way: it was a little longer, a little less rigidly tamed, but it suited him. 

So did the damn beard, now that it didn't look like birds were nesting in it. Steve was obviously growing it out again, but that was fine. Tony would get used to it. Besides, not everyone could wear a goatee without looking stupid. 

Or maybe he'd just been without Steve for so long that everything about him was going to look pretty damn good. It didn't actually matter why. 

"We're really free to come back to the U.S.?" Steve asked. 

"Or anywhere else you want to go," Tony said. He sat down on the coffee table again; it was the only seat that let him look directly at Steve. "Obviously, America has several advantages. One, you won't have to change your business cards like you would if you became Captain Canada." 

"And two?" 

"Our Netflix is better than Canada's." 

"Why are you assuming I'd go to Canada?" Steve shook his head, pressing his lips together tightly in a way that Tony knew meant he was trying not to laugh. "Maybe I like it here. I could learn Spanish."

"You could," Tony agreed. "You could learn Spanish even if you don't stay here, though. And there are other advantages to coming back to the U.S., at least for a visit."

"Besides Netflix? Because I really don't watch a lot of movies, Tony, you know that."

"I wouldn't mind seeing you now and then," he said. "You don't have to come back for good if you don't want. I mean, you broke with the Avengers for a good reason. I'd understand if you didn't want to try that again." 

Steve's expression was guarded. "We'd have to talk about that." 

"I figured. I also figured you'd wait and see what happened with the Accords. It looks like they're going to be completely revamped and a lot less restrictive, but maybe you should go to New York. Address the UN. Make sure that whatever they do next, it's not anything like what they did this time."

"Maybe I should," Steve said. "Maybe you should, too. You were one of the original supporters. Your concerns should have some weight."

"Until they figure out that I've been violating the Accords left and right without even thinking about it. Technically, Friday is sophisticated enough that she's illegal." He laughed a little. "But if you want me backing you, I'll do it. I'm serious. I've had a chance to see what I did, and... it's like every other time I've tried to fix things. I've just created a new set of problems."

"What do you mean?"

"I knew, I _know_, there's something out there. Something coming for us. So Bruce and I built Ultron to try to fix that problem. Result: nearly destroying the human race. _Actually_ destroying a lot of Sokovia. I tried to fix that. Result: the Accords. The Avengers not just breaking up, but shattering. And the list goes on."

"This is where planning might come in handy," Steve said. "Not just reacting." Then he shrugged. "But that's starting to sound like a lecture, and I don't want to lecture you." 

"Yeah?" Tony said, resisting the urge to keep reopening those old wounds. It was weirdly compelling, no matter how much it hurt. "What did you want to do?"

"First? Talk." He got up, went over to the refrigerator, and produced a couple of bottles of beer, He opened them, then carried them back to the couch. "I have no idea if this is any good or not. Sam made a supply run yesterday and said he couldn't resist the name."

Tony was perplexed until Steve set a bottle next to him and he picked it up. The label featured red and white lettering proclaiming that this was "_STARK Cerveza Especial._" Then he laughed. "Let me guess. This was a way of giving you shit?"

Steve's cheeks went faintly pink. "You wouldn't believe how much that was what it was." 

"Really?" Tony balanced the bottle on his knee, sliding his hand up and down the glass. "I'm pretty sure it was kiddie-league stuff. Me, I'd have started by suggesting that what you really needed was to wrap your hand around a Stark." 

Tony remembered that glint in Steve's eye, the one that made it clear that Steve might blush easily, but in private, at least, he was anything but a prude. "Just holding onto it's no fun, though," he said. "All that does is get it all hot."

Well, he wasn't wrong. "So what do you prefer to do with it?"

"What it's clearly made for," he said, lifting the bottle to his lips. Tony wasn't sure how effective Steve's drinking technique was for getting beer from the bottle to his mouth, but it was damn good at making it look like he was fellating the neck of the bottle.

He must have been getting some beer, though, because Tony watched his throat ripple as he swallowed, several times in quick succession, and then lowered the bottle. 

"You drink it down," Steve said in a hoarse voice. "Every last drop." His tongue flicked out to catch a drop of beer that was still clinging to his upper lip. 

That should have been cheesy. 

It was cheesy. It was absolutely ridiculous and overdone and really fucking hot, and Steve was going to be the death of him. 

But instead of begging for Steve to stop being such a damn tease and get on his knees already, he said, "There's at least half a bottle left. So much for 'every last drop.'" His own bottle of beer dangled loosely from his fingers, nearly forgotten. 

He took a drink; it wasn't the best beer he'd had, but it was fine. Then he set the bottle on the table, far enough away from him that he wouldn't knock it over accidentally. They only had a few hours. He didn't want to spend them cleaning spilled beer out of the rug. 

Steve grinned at him. "Which Stark do you want me to swallow right now?"

"If you're going to brag, at least back it up. Drink the damn beer, Steve."

Steve laughed. "If that's what you want."

"As you wish," Tony corrected him. "The correct response is--wait, don't tell me I never showed you _The Princess Bride_."

"You never showed me _The Princess Bride_," Steve said. "But if that's the correct response," he went on, shrugging, "as you wish." 

Maybe Tony ought to do something about that gap in Steve's cultural education. Eventually. Right now, he was going to watch Steve as he slowly drank the rest of his beer, accompanied by breathy little sounds that this beer, no matter how _especial_ it claimed to be, was in no way good enough to inspire. 

He managed not to demand that Steve put the damn beer down and blow him, but it was a close call. Several close calls, in fact, because Steve was a temptation even when he was being an idiot. 

And then, when Tony thought he had to be no more than a few sips away from finishing the bottle, Steve set it down and burst out laughing. "I feel completely ridiculous doing this, you know." 

"You look pretty ridiculous, too," Tony said. "A grown man practicing blow job techniques on a beer bottle, just for the sake of a joke? Absurd."

"Yeah?" Steve's smile softened as he very blatantly looked Tony over. "You don't look like you think it's absurd."

"Oh, I do," Tony said. "I mean, that Stark's just for practice, and you don't need any more of that. You could be testing your skills on the genuine article right now, but instead, you're giving all that attention to a bottle that won't even return the favor."

He shifted position on the table, spreading his legs further apart both to make room for Steve between them, and to make sure that Steve didn't miss seeing the effect he was having on Tony.

"We were supposed to be talking," Steve pointed out. 

"You're the one who went down on your beer bottle," Tony said. "If you wanted to talk, you should have given some consideration to the state of the blood supply to my brain. You're lucky I can actually make words right now, let alone have a serious conversation." 

Steve was laughing at him again, but Tony didn't mind that. "I've never seen you unable to make words," he said. "No matter how distracted you are, you can always talk."

Steve might have a point there. "Okay, I can talk, but I can't really think. At least not about anything other than your mouth."

"This isn't getting you out of having this conversation." Steve's voice was serious, but at least he was still smiling at Tony. "It's just postponing it for a few minutes."

"A few minutes?" Tony tried to sound as sulky as possible. "Either you have an unrealistically high opinion of your own abilities, or an unrealistically low opinion of my ability to recite the entire AC/DC discography in my head to keep myself from coming too fast."

"Is that what you do? I used to hear you mumbling something to yourself, but it never made any sense."

"You'll never know." Especially since he was going to make damn sure he kept that in his head from now on. It would never do to let Steve know when he was doing it; Steve would just do everything he could to keep Tony too distracted to have any self-control at all. 

He wasn't sure if that was irritating or endearing. He remembered feeling that way a lot around Steve. 

But he wanted to do things differently this time, so he was coming down on the side of "endearing." Not irritating at all, just one of Steve's charming little quirks. He liked that they got competitive in bed--he didn't have to decide to think that; it had always been fun--and he was choosing to regard Steve's blatant cheating with amusement and affection. 

He didn't think it was going to be that difficult to keep making that choice. 

"I could try to find out," Steve said. "And anyway, a few minutes, an hour, however long this takes, we're talking afterward. Don't try to tell me you're going to roll over and fall asleep, either. Nine times out of ten, you used to jump out of bed and run to the lab, because you said orgasms give you good ideas."

"Everything gives me good ideas," Tony said, "but I definitely approve of orgasms as an idea-producing mechanism." He picked up his beer again and took a drink, then set it back down, still at a careful distance. "And I know, we're going to have to have a boring serious conversation after this, but wouldn't it be smart to put us both in good moods beforehand?"

Steve shook his head, smiling. "You're incorrigible," he said, but he went down to his knees in front of the coffee table anyway. 

Tony gripped the edge of the table as Steve tugged his zipper down and took his cock out. "Come on," he said. "This is not a day to take our time." They could do that later, because there was going to _be_ a "later."

He didn't have to tell himself that this was the last time, that he was getting Steve out of his system, because that wasn't what this had to be. They were going to work through all the tangled mess between them somehow. 

How the hell was he actually looking forward to putting in that kind of work into a relationship, instead of cutting his losses and moving on? 

Then he looked down at the man kneeling before him and felt that familiar tug at his heart. Oh. Yeah. That was why. 

Steve seemed to agree that they could take their time later, because instead of teasing Tony until he begged for mercy--oh, he missed that, they were definitely going to have to do that later--he took Tony's cock into his mouth, engulfing him in wet heat and beginning to suck. 

Tony groaned. He let go of the table, clutching at Steve's shoulders as Steve licked and sucked and drove him damn near insane. 

"God, yeah," Tony said. "I've missed you so much," he added, because it was easier to be honest like this, when Steve couldn't respond, when he could chalk it all up to having his common sense overpowered by lust. 

In response, Steve caressed Tony's thigh, then relaxed his throat so that he could take Tony in all the way. 

"See how much--" Tony had to stop, gasping when Steve's tongue found an especially sensitive spot--"how much more fun this is with the real thing, not a beer bottle?"

Steve hummed in agreement around Tony. At least, Tony assumed it was agreement. He didn't really care, as long as he could sit here and watch himself slide in and out of Steve's mouth, until he dug his fingers into Steve's shoulders and forced himself to take a deep breath. 

"If you're planning to stop before I come, this is your warning," he said, and wasn't surprised when Steve kept sucking. Steve had never been hesitant about swallowing; the only time he ever stopped was when he wanted Tony to fuck him immediately afterward. 

Since that wasn't in the plan, Tony didn't even try to hold back, his breath catching and sounding a little like a sob when he came. 

Steve didn't pull back until Tony was completely spent; then he sat back on his heels, looking up at Tony as he swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. 

"That was excellent," Tony said, grinning down at him. "Just in case you were wondering."

"So glad you approve." 

"I mean, it could have been better, you know. Maybe you need some lessons from an expert, just to brush up your technique."

Steve's shoulders shook with silent laughter. "Maybe I do, but it's not like experts like that are listed in the phone book." 

"Of course they're not. It's the twenty-first century. Who uses a phone book? And I'm pretty sure they do advertise online, if you look in the right places." He reached out and gently pushed Steve's hair back from his forehead. Steve didn't seem to mind. "But you're in luck, because you happen to have a world-class expert right here in front of you."

"Think pretty highly of yourself, don't you?"

"I can provide testimonials from reputable sources," Tony said, smiling so broadly his face hurt. He felt light, almost giddy, like the universe was finally being set right after being off-kilter for so long. "Captain America, for example."

"Impressive." Steve was only barely managing to keep a straight face. "All right, then. I suppose I'll let you demonstrate your superior technique." 

"Go on, then," Tony said, standing up and doing up his pants again. "Sit on the couch. Unless you want to move to the bedroom?"

"I don't think so. Those beds are incredibly uncomfortable. Besides, Sam and Wanda made me take a top bunk."

"I haven't had sex in a bunk bed since MIT."

"I thought you went to MIT when you were still a kid." Steve stood up, adjusting himself in his pants as he did. 

"I was fifteen. My second year there, I was sixteen. She was seventeen, I think she'd skipped a grade or two in school. Her name was..." He frowned in thought. "Bethany. I don't remember her last name, though."

"I'm not getting into the top bunk with you to let you relive your memories of Bethany, whose name was probably Brenda or Stephanie or Elizabeth, because I don't think you were paying attention."

"I was paying attention," Tony said. "Just not to her last name. And right now, I'd like to pay attention to someone else, so get on the couch."

Steve unfastened his pants and pushed them and his underwear down to his ankles, then sat down on the couch. "Does this work for you?"

"Yeah," Tony said. "Yeah, this works. You work for me."

"Good, because you owe me a lesson." Steve had his cock in his hand now, stroking it lazily. 

"It's a free sample," Tony told him. "Not a full course of instruction. It'll probably be relatively short."

"Just a taste, to see if I like it?"

"Exactly." Tony got down on his knees and put his hand over Steve's. "Let me."

Steve let go, and Tony wrapped his hand around the base of Steve's cock, guiding him to Tony's lips. Then he flicked his tongue out, swirling it around the head, lapping at the bead of moisture forming at the slit. 

"God, Tony, don't tease," Steve said, one hand coming to rest behind Tony's head. 

"I'm not teasing. I'm demonstrating," Tony said, but then he slid his lips down over Steve's cock, taking him in deeply. 

"You know," Steve said, "I think, the last time we did this, you made some promises about what we could do 'later.'"

He pulled back for a moment. "And since you have opinions about sex on bunk beds, it's still going to have to be 'later.'" 

"But when you said that, you weren't expecting there to be a 'later,' were you?"

"Not really," he confessed. "But just for a minute, I wanted to pretend there would be."

"And now?"

"Now, there still might not be a 'later,'" he said. "We'll never know. I could step out to get more of this delightfully-named beer and get hit by a bus. But I want there to be. That is, if you do."

"You don't know that already?"

"Maybe I just wanted to hear it." Tony shrugged. "Never mind. I'm the one who wanted sex now, talking later." He took Steve back into his mouth, hand moving at the base of Steve's shaft as he sucked. 

But Steve rested his hand on Tony's head, stroking it gently, until his fingers tightened in Tony's hair as a warning, and moments later, Tony tasted bitterness and salt on his tongue. 

"I didn't let myself want anything more than that one night," Steve said once he'd caught his breath, his hand still resting on the back of Tony's head. "That was all I was going to get. You'd already made that clear."

Tony swallowed the last drops of Steve's come, then pulled off and looked up at him. "And now?" he said, echoing Steve's question from earlier. 

"And now, yes, I'd like there to be something more than this. I just don't know what, exactly, or how we're going to make it happen."

Tony got awkwardly to his feet--there wasn't a lot of room between the couch and the coffee table--and went to the kitchen. "You need another beer," he said. "And I think I'm going to." Steve would have drowned before he got enough beer into his system to make him even slightly tipsy, and two beers weren't going to have much effect on Tony, either. 

But the beers gave them something to do with their hands while they talked, at least, somewhere to focus their attention if looking at one another became too awkward. 

Besides, Tony liked the name. 

When he came back to the couch, Steve had his clothes back in order and was sitting at one and of the couch. "Thanks," he said when Tony held the beer out to him.

"I could have made coffee, but I didn't see the pot."

"There's no coffeemaker," Steve said. "We have some instant, though."

Tony gave a full-body shudder. "Beer is fine."

"Especially beer with your name on it?"

"It's a coincidence." 

"And you're going to start stocking it at the compound."

"And I'm going to replace every single bottle of Rhodey's Heineken with it, yes." He took a drink from his first bottle; it was still reasonably cold. The crisp taste of the lager washed away some of the taste of Steve on his tongue, which was probably good for his powers of concentration. 

"So where do we go from here?" Steve said. 

"That's the question, isn't it? We can't just go back to the way things used to be."

Steve didn't reply immediately, which gave Tony time to think about the way things had been between them. Better than hating one another, but clearly there had been room for improvement. 

Things would have gone down differently in Siberia if there hadn't been. The fight in Berlin might still have happened, because they were still both stubborn as hell if they were convinced they were right, but Siberia would have been different. 

Steve must have reached the same conclusion, because he shrugged and said, "Is that such a bad thing, though?"

"I guess not. There were a lot of things we did wrong even before things fell apart. A lot of things _I_ did wrong," he admitted. "And I'll probably still do a lot of things wrong."

"So will I," Steve said. "Neither one of us is actually great at the whole 'interpersonal relationships' deal. I'm just polite about it, so people notice it less."

Steve had a point there. Not even Tony had recognized that a lot of the time, but now that he considered it, Steve was right. "So what do we do?"

"Keep making mistakes. Keep fixing them. Try trusting one another, if we can. I know that I trust you, and I should have trusted you more in the past. But if you can't do the same, given everything, I understand."

"I can try," he said. "Obviously I trust you to some extent. The rest is going to take some time." He took a few more swallows of his beer, trying to get his thoughts in order. "I can try not to react without thinking things through, without talking to you or someone else about it if it's something important." That would have prevented so many of his mistakes, and he was man enough to admit it. 

"_If_," he went on, "you can try to stop making my decisions for me. I'm a big boy, you don't get to decide that I shouldn't know things that affect me personally."

"And if we fail?"

"Oh, we're going to fail," Tony said, trying to sound cheerful about it. "When we do, we figure out how not to fail in that exact way again. That's something I'm pretty good at." He was good at finding new mistakes to make, granted, but at least they were new mistakes. "Besides, make-up sex can be spectacular."

"I think I can do that," Steve said. He set his bottle down on the table and held his hand out to Tony. "We're agreed, then?"

Tony didn't even have to tell himself to find Steve's offer of a handshake to seal the deal an endearing quirk. It was so damn _Steve_ that his heart ached with it. "Yeah," Tony said, taking Steve's hand. "Agreed." 

Steve held onto his hand for a lot longer than he really needed to. Tony didn't mind, but he did lean in after thirty seconds or so, so that he could cement their agreement in a better way than a handshake. 

Steve made the kiss last a lot longer than strictly necessary, too, but Tony minded that even less. 

"In the interest of honesty, then," Steve said, when they finally broke the kiss, "I should probably tell you that I misled you earlier."

Tony could feel his shoulders tense up. Already? Two minutes in, and this was already happening? "What about?" he asked, trying to sound calm. 

"You never did show me _The Princess Bride_," he said, "but I didn't tell you that Sam did. And I did, definitely, get the reference." 

Tony practically sagged against the couch in relief. "Yeah?" 

"Yeah," Steve said, and Tony had no choice but to kiss him again.

****

Tony hadn't had any concrete expectations when he'd gone back to Madrid. He'd wanted to pass on all the good news in person, and he'd wanted to put things right with Steve if he could.

Mission accomplished, then. 

But he'd been a little disappointed, all the same, when even though Steve could have come back to the compound with him, he'd chosen not to. 

Only a little disappointed, because they weren't giving up. Steve wasn't rejecting him. It might have felt like that, just a little, but he knew better. Before he'd left Madrid, in fact, he and Steve had already made arrangements to meet again, in London this time, only a week later. 

After London, it had been Symkaria, and then, for reasons only Steve knew, Dallas. 

Dallas was where Tony had been able to give Steve the news that the authorities in Lichtenbad had found where Natasha was buried, and that Tony had made arrangements to have her body cremated and then delivered to the compound. 

"I figured it was the closest thing she had to a home, lately. I mean, other than the jet you blew up," he added, just to see if he could get Steve to smile. 

It was small and forced-looking, but it did happen. 

"It's a good idea," Steve said. 

"You should come." He was lying on his back on the bed in their hotel room, staring up at the featureless ceiling, because he didn't want to see Steve's face when he refused. 

If what they could make work was this: a couple of nights at a time, a different city every time because Steve hadn't figured out what he wanted to do next, then that was what they'd have. 

"Just for that," he added, because he'd promised, in Symkaria, to stop asking Steve to move back to the compound. "We're going to scatter her ashes near the lake. Clint's off house arrest, so he'll be there. He's making most of the arrangements, and he's bringing his family. Sam and Wanda have both said they'll be there, too."

Steve sighed heavily. "There's a problem with that." 

Tony immediately began making a mental list of who he had to intimidate at the State Department or the UN. He wasn't sure what the problem could be. Steve was free to travel wherever he wanted, more or less. He was free to be an Avenger again, if he chose; Rhodey had already reached out to him, although Tony didn't know what Steve had decided.

The only real reason for him to not want to come back to the compound was Tony, but Tony wasn't asking for more than just a visit, for Natasha's sake. They were the nearest thing she'd had to a family. They couldn't all be there; Bruce was gone and they couldn't contact Thor, but the rest of them should show up. 

"So I'll fix it," Tony said. "I can throw money at most problems until they go away."

"Not this one," Steve said quietly.

"Tell me what it is, so I can tell you how wrong you are."

"If I come back, I'm going to want to stay."

"Would that be so bad? You can move back into your own quarters, and if you ever want to change that, we can renovate. Make my place big enough for two." 

"Your living room is bigger than the apartment I grew up in," Steve said. "How much bigger does it need to be?"

"You're missing the point. The point is that you should come home."

"We still have a lot to work through, Tony. You know that."

He raised up on his elbows so he could look at Steve, sitting at the foot of the bed, turned so that he was facing away from Tony. Steve was making this so much harder than it had to be, damn it. 

"I do know that," he said, "which is why I'm not asking you to move in with me, or flying to Wakanda to ask Barnes for your hand in marriage." That got a chuckle out of Steve, so he went on. "We can work on our shit a lot better if we see each other more than once every couple of weeks. Besides, we have a team to rebuild, and we need Captain America, full-time."

"I know," Steve said, "and I want to. I just don't know if it's the right thing to do."

"What if I say that I need you there? Does that help you make up your mind? I mean, would it. Theoretically. If I were to say that."

Steve was silent for a little while, considering. "Theoretically," he said at last, slowly, "if you were to say that, then I suppose I'd have to say that it would help. And that I'd try coming back. If it turned out to be too much, too fast, I could always start traveling again."

Tony had gotten so good, over the past few weeks, at ignoring that ache of missing Steve again that he didn't even notice it.

Until suddenly, it was gone. 

"Let's test that theory," he said, and reached out for Steve.

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this fic comes from the poem ["Guest," by Edward A. Lacey](https://mireille719.dreamwidth.org/1362536.html), which was also pretty inspirational in general. 
> 
> I had a playlist that was on constant repeat while I was writing and editing this fic; you can find it [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/43DBlRyz3JlG3K13d3Oz1n?si=buiAOVnZTziqze--Kk_mZg).

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Dreamwidth](https://mireille719.dreamwidth.org/).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Beta (Come to Me By Night)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21330508) by [13bella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/13bella/pseuds/13bella)
  * [Cap-IM BB art Team Beta 2019](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21318715) by [essouffle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/essouffle/pseuds/essouffle)


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